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RUBY:

From Schwartz Media, I’m Ruby Jones, this is 7am.

After one of the most tumultuous periods in recent US history, voters have chosen Joe Biden to try and reunite a divided country.

Biden has eyed the Presidency for decades, and already has a long and established political career. So what can we learn from his earlier years as a politician as to how he will approach this moment in time?

Today, The Saturday Paper’s world editor, Jonathan Pearlman, on Joe Biden’s life, his upcoming presidency, and what it means for important issues like climate change.

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RUBY:

Jonathan, let's talk about where Joe Biden's political career began, what was a young Joe Biden like and why did he get into politics?

JONATHAN:

I think the most distinguishing feature, really, of his early years is that he always saw himself as a future president and always wanted to go into politics. And he did go into politics at a very young age.

Archival Tape -- Unidentified Reporter:

“The youngest new face in the US senate next year will be democrat Joseph Biden of Delaware. So young in fact…”

JONATHAN:

He became a counsellor and then he ran in the Senate contest as a twenty nine year old and won to the surprise of many and to some extent himself.

Archival Tape -- Joe Biden:

“I expect these fellas are going to eventually judge me on my merit and not on my age, and I have to establish that merit assuming there is any there…”

JONATHAN:

So he got off to a very swift start and that was something he'd always wanted to do. I think one of the signs of that really was he had this stutter, which to some extent he still has, but he worked very hard to overcome that, spending long amounts of time in front of the mirror reciting speeches. So he helped to turn himself into a politician quite successfully.

But then tragically, immediately after winning the Senate race, his wife and three children were in a terrible car crash in which his wife and baby daughter died. And he considered not even entering the Senate at all, but ended up getting sworn in at the hospital...

Archival Tape -- Unidentified Man:

“So help you, god.”

Archival Tape -- Joe Biden:

“I do.”

Archival Tape -- Unidentified Man:

“Congratulations, senator.”

JONATHAN:

...with these two sons who were still injured.

Archival Tape -- Joe Biden:

“If in 6 months of so there’s a conflict between my being a good father and being a senator, which I hope will not occur, we can always get another senator but they cannot get a new father.”

JONATHAN:

And that obviously is just an unimaginable trauma that really has defined his life. And it was in a way, sadly bracketed much later on in his life when his son Beau, who had also gone into politics, was potentially going to be Delaware governor, died of cancer.

Archival Tape -- Joe Biden:

“Look I miss him every day, for God’s sake. I mean, he was my soul. Hunter’s my heart, he was my soul.”

JONATHAN:

He suffered really incredible tragedy in his life. And I think that's one of the features that defines him as a person. But the other one is his ambition, his commitment to politics. He spent a long, long time in the Senate, made two presidential runs. And by the time he finally won this year, he was really just a well-known veteran figure in Washington.

RUBY:

Right ok, let’s talk about Joe Biden’s first attempts at becoming President. What happens?

JONATHAN:

Well, he'd run for president in the late 80s and the campaign went terribly.

Archival Tape -- Joe Biden:

“Alright ladies and gentlemen. Thank you. Thank you very, very much”

JONATHAN:

Including being found out for plagiarising speeches from Neil Kinnock, the British leader, and also from Ted Kennedy.

Archival Tape -- Joe Biden:

“Let us pledge that our generation of Americans will pay any price, bear any burden, accept any challenge and meet any hardship…”

JONATHAN:

And he explained this really by saying that he had originally cited them when quoting these slabs of their speeches.

Archival Tape -- Ted Kennedy:

“We shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend.”

JONATHAN:

And then as the campaign wore on and he got used to giving these stump speeches, he lost the citations.

But that campaign was derailed early...

Archival Tape -- Joe Biden:

“Three and a half months ago I announced my candidacy for the president of the United States. There’ll be other opportunities for me to campaign for president…”

JONATHAN:

...and then he decided to run again in 2008. And it was really the wrong election for him to run in, I think. I mean, he did very, very badly. There were two standout candidates from the beginning. Hillary Clinton went in as a favourite and Obama quickly distinguished himself, so Biden’s campaign didn't go well at all. But he did enough to impress Obama.

Archival Tape -- Barack Obama:

“Today, I’ve come back to Springfield to tell you I’ve found that leader. A man with a distinguished record. A man with fundamental decency. And that man is Joe Biden.”

RUBY:

Mm. And so Biden became Vice President to Obama. What was that relationship like?

JONATHAN:

So they had a very good working relationship. He did help Obama to navigate through Washington. So he helped Obama win votes from Republicans on the stimulus bill. He helped Obama on the health care bill, played a very big role in that.

Archival Tape -- Joe Biden:

“What made that work is that all those debates we had, the only 2 people that didn’t disagree on any subject were Barack Obama and Joe Biden.”

JONATHAN:

The only other thing is that he had had a lot of foreign policy experience on the Foreign Relations Committee and was given quite a large foreign policy role under Obama. He apparently did not support the mission to kill Osama bin Laden.

Archival Tape -- Joe Biden:

“I said we owe the man a direct answer. Mr. President, my suggestion is don’t go, we have to do two more things to see if he’s there. He walked out and said I’ll give you my decision.”

JONATHAN:

He also tried to resist Obama's increase of the military deployment in Afghanistan. So we do see something about his caution in foreign affairs, I think, from his vice presidency.

RUBY:

Jonathan, Joe Biden faced both a very tough contest in the primary and also in the actual election. So do we know why voters turned to him first to be the candidate to take on Trump, but then ultimately to become the president?

JONATHAN:

I think Donald Trump is very good at coming up with nicknames to describe his political opponents, the very sharp and very effective,

Archival Tape -- Donald Trump:

“Little Marco, little marco.”

JONATHAN:

Describing Marco Rubio as Little Marco and low-energy Bush

Archival Tape -- Donald Trump:

“One second.”

Archival Tape -- Marco Rubio:

“No. The simple fact is that --”

Archival Tape -- Donald Trump:

“More energy tonight, I like that.”

JONATHAN:

Crooked Hillary.

Archival Tape -- Donald Trump:

“That Hillary, as I say crooked Hillary. It could be that we run against crazy Bernie.”

JONATHAN:

But I think Sleepy Joe for Joe Biden in some senses backfired because I think it looks like America was ready for a bit of a deep breath and good lie down.

Archival Tape -- Donald Trump:

“Now Sleepy Joe would say, the unemployment rate in the great state of Ohio, no no, Joe, you’re in South Carolina!”

JONATHAN:

So I think one of the things that Biden is bringing is some degree of calm to a very divided America. He promised in his speech and he's promised repeatedly to try to heal again, harkening back to his own personal trauma that he's experienced.

In a way it has helped him at this current time because we're suffering this devastating Coronavirus pandemic, and Biden has explicitly presented himself as someone who understands the grief.

Archival Tape -- Joe Biden:

“As a consequence of this overwhelming lying and misleading and irresponsible action on the part of Donald Trump, how many empty chairs are there around dinner tables at night because of his negligence?”

JONATHAN:

You saw that in the debate when he would look down the camera and tell the families of America that he understands the grief that they're feeling and that many people have lost members of their family.

Archival Tape -- Joe Biden:

“How many husbands or wives at night lean over to touch and say good night to their wife or husband, and they’re not there? How many people have holes in their heart and lost part of their soul?”

JONATHAN:

So you can certainly see that as him exploiting his own grief. But there is an amount of credibility that goes with his insistence that he understands the pain of Americans right now and is going to try to do something about it.

RUBY:

We'll be back after this.

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RUBY:

Jonathan, Joe Biden has promised to unite America, and I’m wondering, do you think he can? There are some significant roadblocks to that plan, things like a republican senate.

JONATHAN:

I think it's very difficult. I think it's very difficult for Biden to really unite the country. It's been a very divided country for a long time now.

Archival Tape -- Joe Biden:

“I pledge to be a president who seeks not to divide but unify. Who doesn’t see red states and blue states, only sees the United States.”

JONATHAN:

And the partisanship that we've seen in Washington will continue.

Archival Tape -- Joe Biden:

“To rebuild the backbone of this nation - the middle class - and to make America respected around the world again.”

JONATHAN:

Trump has shown that appeals to that far-right base are politically effective, and so those will continue. You know, we've seen that going back to the Tea Party and the destabilising effect that that had in Washington.

Archival Tape -- Joe Biden:

“And work with all my heart with the confidence of the whole people, to win the confidence of all of you.”

JONATHAN:

And, yes, the Democrats are unlikely to control the Senate and we'll have midterm elections that are going to shake things up further. The Supreme Court is now a six three conservative majority. So I think it will be very difficult task for Biden to unite the country, even though his election suggests that a lot of people in America are looking for that right now.

RUBY:

Do you think he will be able to sort of reset and return the U.S. to business as usual, especially in terms of how it’s perceived around the world?

JONATHAN:

I think the world might be hoping that that is what he's going to be able to deliver, some reset. I think that's what he himself is presenting. But I think it's going to be very difficult, particularly on a foreign policy front, to go back to the way things were before Trump.

So, Trump has tried to withdraw forces and commitments from the Middle East, from Syria and Afghanistan. And I think Biden will probably continue that. So I think there’s some bipartisan support for America reducing its military commitment and footprint overseas.

Archival Tape -- Joe Biden:

“It’s long past time we end the forever wars which have cost us untold blood and treasure.”

JONATHAN:

But in the Middle East, for instance, he will look to rejoin the Iran nuclear deal.

Archival Tape -- Joe Biden:

“It was working, it was being held tightly. There was no movement on the part of the Iraian government to get closer to nuclear weapons.”

JONATHAN:

Which could be very significant and could potentially ease some of the strains around the Gulf that we're seeing at the moment.

Archival Tape -- Joe Biden:

“The next president has to be able to pull those folks back together, re-establish our alliances and insist that Iran go back into the agreement.”

JONATHAN:

I think he will not adopt the sort of avowedly pro-Israel policy that Trump has. So, again, that will be more of a return to the traditional attempt by American presidents to present themselves as an honest broker in the Middle East.

Archival Tape -- Joe Biden:

“So I’ll make it my mission to restore American leadership, elevate diplomacy as a principle tool of our foreign policy.”

JONATHAN:

I think that that's what we'll see from Biden.

RUBY:

And Jonathan, what about climate change? Because under Trump, the US barely engaged on the issue, but is this an area that Biden will be seeking to establish the country’s global leadership?

JONATHAN:

Well, I think one of the first things Biden will do is rejoin the Paris agreement.

Archival Tape -- Joe Biden:

“That’s why we have to get back into, back into the Paris Accord.”

JONATHAN:

And, yes, I think we will see a very significant change on US climate policy and global climate policy under Biden. I think one of the reasons is that that was an area where he was able to bring in the progressive wing of the Democrat Party.

He didn't commit completely to the new Green Deal, the really ambitious climate programme presented by the progressives and backed by Bernie Sanders.

Archival Tape -- Chris Wallace:

“Do you support the Green New Deal?”

Archival Tape -- Joe Biden:

“No, I don’t.”

Archival Tape -- Joe Donald Trump:

“Oh you don't? Oh, that’s a big statement, that means you just lost the radical left.”

JONATHAN:

But he did make a lot of compromises or shifts on climate policy, I think, to accommodate the progressives in the party. And I think if you look at his foreign policy plans, there is a lot of detail there and including not just rejoining Paris, but really encouraging other countries to adopt tougher carbon emission reduction targets and clearly Australia is going to be one of those countries on Biden’s list of who he wants to talk to about upping their targets because so far, Canberra pointedly held out on that.

RUBY:

So do you think his presidency will force a rethink of the Australian government's approach to climate change?

JONATHAN:

I do think that Morrison, like all Australian prime ministers, is going to try to present himself as very much on a united front with the new American president and is not going to want there to be huge fissures opening up between them or between Canberra and Washington. So there will be pressure on Morrison to act, but whether he's able to, I think, will be a matter of Australian domestic politics.

RUBY:

Jonathan, thank you so much for your time today.

JONATHAN:

Great to talk to you, Ruby.

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RUBY:

Also in the news today...

The federal government has extended the supplemented JobSeeker payment, though at a reduced rate, until the end of March next year.

The supplement, which was initially $550 and is currently $250, was due to expire at Christmas.

And an ABC investigation has uncovered allegations of inappropriate behaviour towards women by federal Attorney-General Christian Porter and Acting Immigration minister, Alan Tudge. Porter has denied the allegations.

It’s been reported that senior members of the government attempted to quash the Four Corners report before it aired on Monday night.

I’m Ruby Jones, this is 7am, see you tomorrow.