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When US Senator Joe Biden of Delaware announced his candidacy for the Democratic nomination in the 2020 presidential election, this did not mark his first attempt to elect the highest office of the United States . He had also asked for the Democratic nomination in 2008, but had abandoned it long before the convention after a bad performance in the Iowa caucus. He was then chosen to run as Vice President for Barack Obama and then served two terms as Vice President.
Biden also sought the US presidency in 1988, although his candidacy was broken by accusations that he plagiarized documents and exaggerated his educational background. These "problems of character" resurfaced in partisan social media publications, which multiplied after Biden launched his bid for the 2020 presidency in April 2019. Pages such as "Elect Trump 2020", "Breitbart & "Bunker" and "Being Libertarian" have the video clip that they maintained showed that Biden announced in 1988 that he was withdrawing from the presidential campaign:
In fact, this television news clip shows Biden at a press conference announcing his withdrawal from the 1988 presidential race, although it took place on September 23, 1987 and not in 1988, as indicated. in the Facebook article. (A full video of the press conference is available on C-SPAN.org.)
The lede of the Chicago TribuneThe report on Biden's withdrawal reads as follows:
Senator Joseph Biden of Delaware, whose presidential campaign was tainted by plagiarism confessions and improvement of his academic record, withdrew from the race for the Democratic nomination of 1988, claiming that "the exaggerated shadow" of his mistakes was beginning to "obscure the essence" of my candidacy. "
Biden, 44, called a press conference to say that he was ending his campaign with "incredible reluctance" and that he was "angry at myself for having to make that choice" between himself. run for president and fight against the appointment of Judge Robert Bork. at the United States Supreme Court.
Biden retired from the race because his campaign had been "overwhelmed" (in his own words) with allegations that "he had used many quotes from other politicians without attributing them, had failed to a law class after failing to assign a lengthy quote in an article he wrote and extolled inaccurately and angrily about his academic background during an election appearance in the New Hampshire, "he added. tribune reported.
The announcement took place 10 days after the New York TimesMaureen Dowd stated that Biden had "lifted" part of the speech of British Labor Party leader Neil Kinnock, "with intact Welsh lyrics, gestures, and lyrics," for use in a debate on August 23, 1987 at State of Iowa. It was not the first time that Biden had used elements of Kinnock's speech, Dowd noted, but on other occasions he quoted Kinnock as a source:
"During various appearances in the campaign, the Senator spoke with admiration of Mr. Kinnock's themes and incorporated sentences and concepts after crediting the British. But, in his closing remarks at the Iowa State Fair forum, he did not mention the Labor leader, any more than he did a few days later at the same time. An interview when he recounted the positive response. "
Biden's assistants said the omission was "an oversight" and sought to stifle controversy, but only worsened as other alleged instances of plagiarism were revealed. On September 16, Knight-Ridder reported that Biden had delivered a speech to the Democratic Party of California of "textual passages" borrowed from a 1968 speech by the late Robert F. Kennedy. The next day, reports revealed that Biden had plagiarized a law journal article in an article he had written during his first year at the law school. This incident earned him a failing grade in the class, which he had to resume the following year to have the "F" removed from his file.
Biden convened a press conference on September 17 during which he acknowledged the incident that occurred at the law school but said that it was just a matter of fact. error and that he had misunderstood the requirements of the school in terms of quotation. "I was wrong, but I was not in any way malicious," he said. "I did not intentionally want to deceive anyone. And I did not do it. To date, I have not done it.
However, he maintained that accusations of plagiarism about other politicians were "a lot of nonsense," saying it was common for politicians to borrow from each other's speech and be "ridiculous" about wait otherwise. "I'm in the race to stay, I'm in the race to win and I'm coming," added Biden.
In a gesture of transparency, Biden provided the media with a 65-page file containing all of his academic records from the Syracuse University Law College. Ironically, it was a gesture that made things worse. A comparison of the documents with Biden's public statements revealed that he had exaggerated his academic achievements. "In a videotape broadcast by the C-SPAN public network, there are several months," reported the Associated Press (citing original reports from Newsweek), "On April 3, a member of the Delaware Democrats was questioned about the study of the law school he attended and the results he obtained" at one stage of the campaign in Claremont (NH):
On the videotape, Biden, clearly irritated, told the interrogator, "I think I probably have a much higher IQ than you.
"The first year in law school, I decided I did not want to be a law student. I ended up in the bottom two-thirds of my class, then decided to stay and return to law school. the top half of my class, "he continued.
But last week, Biden released his law school record, showing that he had graduated 85th out of 85. The transcript also indicated that he had made little progress over the past three years of courses, ranking 80 out of 100 in the first half of the first year and 79th out of 87 in the second half of his second year.
Biden also stated in the New Hampshire speech that he had attended law school "with a full scholarship", but records show that this scholarship only covered about half of his tuition fees.
Biden said he was "frustrated" and "pissed off" by the reports. "I'm exaggerating when I'm angry, but I've never been telling people things that are not true about me," he told the New York Times. "It's so easy to make people think of something sinister."
But the damage was done. On 23 September 1987, two days after the discrepancies between his public statements and his academic record were reported, Biden announced his withdrawal from the race. He admitted to making mistakes – unintentional mistakes, he said – but insisted that public perception of his character had been skewed by the "exaggerated shadow" of his mistakes as described in the press and by his political opponents.
He will write later in his memoirs, Promises to keep: on life and politics (Random House, 2007), that he had to blame only himself:
When I stopped trying to explain and think about everyone, I was totally blamed. Maybe the reporters who were traveling with me had seen Kinnock credited again and again, but it was Joe Biden who had forgotten to credit Kinnock during the fair state debate. I had been immature and jumped class and blown the paper of legal methods. I was the one who thought it was good enough to get by in the law school. I lost my temper in New Hampshire. What I said about my grades was simply a lack of memory or a lack of knowledge. I could not remember where I finished my law class. I do not care. But to say, "Do you want to compare IQ?" Was so stupid. It was all my fault and I did not want to aggravate the mistakes.
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