Fatherly Advice

Deconstructing what Biden Sr. said to Joey.

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,        Or walk with Kings — nor lose the common touch, If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,     If all men count with you, but none too much; If you can fill the unforgiving minute     With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,    Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,        And — which is more — you’ll be a Man, my son! — Rudyard Kipling, “If” Joe Biden hasn’t spoken up much since he became the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, but on the occasions when Joe Biden has spoken up, we’re heard an awful lot about the father of Joseph Robinette Biden Jr., namely Joseph Robinette Biden Sr. — in particular, about the various things he said in tough times to his son and namesake. This is nothing new. Throughout his political career, Lunch Bucket Joe has loved quoting his dad. Or, perhaps, he just loves attributing statements to the old man — whether or not the guy ever said these things, and even if they’re quotidian nonsense of the kind that millions of dads must have said at some point but that nobody ever remembers because these banalities were hardly their greatest hits. For example, Biden has repeatedly said that on that now-famous occasion when his dad was fired from a job, he told little Joey: “It’s going to be okay.” And then there was this deathless remark, which was delivered on the same occasion, and which Biden has cited over and over, as if it held the key to all wisdom: “Joey, you got to be a big boy.” Did his dad also say “Time flies”? Or “Haste makes waste”? Or “What goes around comes around”? Maybe, but not in Joey’s company, because if he did, twelve to seven he’d quote those pearls too. Don’t get me wrong: America can’t expect — and almost certainly shouldn’t want — a president who effortlessly tosses off aperçus from Locke and Aquinas and Marcus Aurelius. Still, there’s something scary about a presidential hopeful who’s so, well, hopeless that his intellectual foundation ...