Joe Biden in Promise Me, Dad:, by Joe Biden
On Crime:
1980s community policing worked to reduce crime rate
In the eighties, when the crime rate exploded, I began to pursue a new--but in fact a very old--concept of policing. That was getting cops back walking the street so they'll know the shopkeepers, know the neighborhood. And getting the neighborhood kids
to know the cops and to trust them. We had moved away from that concept--the new model was a lone cop riding around in a police cruiser instead of walking the beat--and the best criminologists were advocating the old idea with a new name: community
policing. I finally got real funding written into the crime bill in 1994 that provided an additional 100,000 local cops. And it worked.Violent crime dropped precipitously, from almost 2 million incidents in 1994 to 1.4 million in 2000. The murder rate
was cut nearly in half. Relations between the police and the black community, while far from perfect, were very much improved. But community policing became a victim of its own success. As crime went down, so too did public pressure to focus on policing.
Source: Promise Me, Dad,by Joe Biden, p. 37-40
Nov 14, 2017
On Foreign Policy:
Repair US relations with Central America's Northern Triangle
When a crisis erupted after unaccompanied children from the Northern Triangle in Central America began pouring across our border, he turned to me and said, "Joe, you've got to fix this." [The Northern Triangle refers to three Central American countries
which are roiled by violence and crime, causing many thousands of emigrants to cross Mexico seeking refuge in the U.S.]At one point soon after, the president asked me to take over the job o repairing our wobbly relations across the entirety of the
Americas--the Northern Triangle, Brazil, the Caribbean, everything.
A few weeks after that I was headed to Guatemala for a two-day summit with the leaders of the
Northern Triangle countries. My job was to persuade them that they had to make the hard political choices that would convince the United States Congress to fund their Alliance for Prosperity.
Source: Promise Me, Dad,by Joe Biden, p. 74&77
Nov 14, 2017
On Foreign Policy:
Russia vs. Ukraine: Big country beating up a smaller one
In 2015, Putin-backed separatists made an assault on Ukrainian soldiers. Putin was doing everything he could to destabilize the Ukrainian economy and force a collapse of the newly elected government in Kyiv.I was the point man for our administration
on the crisis, which was exactly where I wanted to be. There were academics in the news saying Ukraine was bound to be a defeat for the West, & it would be an unwelcome albatross on my neck if I ran for president in 2016. "He's tied to Ukraine policy,"
a presidential scholar from Pennsylvania told a reporter. "So he could be vulnerable." I didn't much care. There was an important principle at stake: big countries ought not to beat up smaller ones, especially after they had given their word not to.
Ukraine had given up its nuclear weapons program years earlier--in return for a guarantee from the U.S., the United Kingdom, AND RUSSIA to respect its borders and its sovereignty. Two of the three larger countries had kept that promise.
Source: Promise Me, Dad,by Joe Biden, p. 99-101
Nov 14, 2017
On Foreign Policy:
Create secure, democratic, middle-class Western Hemisphere
[Even before the unaccompanied children crisis of 2014.] I had laid out some guiding principles for the U.S. engagement in Latin America. "In the region, we're still being viewed by many as disengaged, domineering, or both," I said, "but
I would argue that's not us anymore. Too many in my country still look south to the region of 600 million people and see mostly pockets of poverty and strife.
But that's not you anymore. Neither stereotype is accurate. And they haven't been, I would argue, for some time. "The changes under way give all of us an opportunity to look at the hemisphere in a very different way:
I think we should be talking about the hemisphere as middle class, secure, and democratic. From Canada to Chile and everywhere in between."
Source: Promise Me, Dad,by Joe Biden, p.128
Nov 14, 2017
On Government Reform:
Reject Super-PACs: "We the People" became "We the Donors"
[Campaigning in 2015], to speak to the middle class, I felt we had to do one more thing: Biden for President was going to reject the super PAC system. It was tempting to play the game because we would be getting such a late start.
And for the first time in all my years of campaigning, I knew there was big money out there for me. But I also knew people were sick of it all. "We the People" didn't ring so true anymore.
I wrote as a United States senator was for public funding of elections. Now, foolhardy or not, I was going to try to upend the new money rush that was overwhelming our politics.
Source: Promise Me, Dad,by Joe Biden, p.229-30
Nov 14, 2017
On Principles & Values:
Son Beau died of brain cancer despite experimental surgery
[When adult son Beau got ill with brain cancer], we had been drawn to M.D. Anderson by the reputation of Dr. Raymond Sawaya, a neurosurgeon who was regarded among the best in the world at a procedure called awake craniotomy. The patient was actually
conscious through most of the surgery. Dr Sawaya had removed a tumor slightly larger than a golf ball, he explained, & Beau had come through without a single complication.; except for the scar on the left side of his head, he would be as he was before.
His speech, his cognition, and his motor skills were unharmed. But the news was not all good. The tumor was slightly diffuse, and Sawaya had not been able to get all of it. Then the news got worse. Much worse. The lab results, Dr. Sawaya explained,
confirmed the medical team's expectations: Beau's tumor was definitely glioblastoma. Stage IV. It felt like I had been knocked down. I reached for my rosary and asked God to give me the strength to handle this. [Beau died a year later.]
Source: Promise Me, Dad,by Joe Biden, p. 28-30
Nov 14, 2017
On Principles & Values:
Memory of lost family members will someday bring a smile
I told [a grieving victim of sudden loss of a family member] what I try to tell everybody: There will come a time when you'll go riding by a field that you both loved, or see a flower, or smell the fragrance of his suit when he took it off and hung
it in the closet, or you'll hear a song, or you'll look at the way someone walks, and it will all come back. But someday down the line, God knows when, you'll realize it doesn't make you want to cry.
It makes you smile. "The time will come when the memory will bring a smile to your lips," I would tell everyone in that situation, "before it brings tears to your eyes."
That WILL happen, I assured her. And that is when you know that you've turned a corner.
Source: Promise Me, Dad,by Joe Biden, p. 54
Nov 14, 2017
On Technology:
$15B initiative to rebuild energy & water infrastructure
[In 2014], the secretary of energy had been asking me to take the lead in pushing a $15 billion initiative to rebuild the country's aging energy infrastructure. This was a urgent and much-needed fix. Power outages caused by storms, especially along
shorelines, were costing Americans billions of dollars a year because the electricity grid needed to be modernized. An inexcusable number of the nation's water pipelines were still made of WOOD. Gas lines around the country were springing leaks,
and no wonder. Many had been put in the ground back when Eisenhower was president. Dangerous amounts of methane gas were escaping into the atmosphere at every stage of the natural gas supply chain.
My job was to sell the plan to key members of the House and Senate, and I was hoping to get real bipartisan support.
Source: Promise Me, Dad,by Joe Biden, p. 86
Nov 14, 2017
On War & Peace:
Inviolate borders for Ukraine; no spheres of influence
[I presented my views on the Russian invasion of Ukraine on the Senate floor], that it is not the objective to collapse or weaken the Russian economy. But President Putin has to make a simple, stark choice: get out of Ukraine or face continued isolation
and growing economic costs at home."I did stand here six years ago and in the first major foreign policy address of our administration, I spoke about the 'reset,'" We have moved from resetting this important relationship to reasserting the
fundamental bedrock principles on which European freedom and stability rest. And I'll say it again: inviolate borders, no spheres of influence, the sovereign right to choose your own alliances. I cannot repeat that often enough. We need
to remain resolute and united in our support of Ukraine. What happens there will resonate well beyond Ukraine. It matters to all--not just in Europe, but around the world--all who may be subject to aggression."
Source: Promise Me, Dad,by Joe Biden, p.105-7
Nov 14, 2017
On Welfare & Poverty:
Defining issue as Obama VP: restoring the middle class
[During Obama's vetting for selecting Biden for V.P.], I remember exactly when it became clear to me that this would be the right thing to do. I already knew from the presidential primary debates and from working with him on the Foreign Relations
Committee that we did not have substantive differences on issues. What differences there were, were tactical. But I asked him in Minneapolis if he really meant what he said: that he wanted me to help him govern, especially in foreign policy matters.
He said he did. And I asked him if he meant what he said about the restoration of the middle class being a defining issue of his presidency.
"Yes," he said. "I really mean it." I believed him. I was convinced he was an honest and thoroughly honorable man who kept his word. I was also convinced that he could be a really good president.
Source: Promise Me, Dad,by Joe Biden, p. 63-4
Nov 14, 2017
Page last updated: Apr 11, 2019