Joe Biden
A Delaware lawyer elected to the Senate at twenty-nine, who served there for thirty-six years and as vice president for eight before winning the presidency in 2020.
Biography
Biden was born in Scranton, Pennsylvania, and moved to Delaware as a boy when his father found work there. He overcame a severe childhood stutter, took a double major at the University of Delaware and a law degree at Syracuse, and was elected to the New Castle County Council in 1970. He won a Senate seat in 1972 at twenty-nine, weeks before a car crash killed his wife and infant daughter.
He spent thirty-six years in the Senate, chairing the Judiciary Committee and later the Foreign Relations Committee, and ran unsuccessfully for president in 1988 and 2008. He was Barack Obama’s vice president for eight years and won the 2020 election.
His term covered the American Rescue Plan, the bipartisan infrastructure law, the CHIPS and Science Act, the Inflation Reduction Act, the withdrawal from Afghanistan, military and economic support for Ukraine after the Russian invasion, the inflation surge of 2021–2023 and the Federal Reserve’s response to it, and student-loan relief efforts that the courts narrowed. He withdrew from the 2024 race in July 2024.
Education
- Archmere Academy, Claymont, Delaware, Graduated (1961)
- University of Delaware, B.A. in history and political science (1965)
- Syracuse University College of Law, J.D. (1968)
Offices held before the presidency
- New Castle County Council, Delaware, 1970–1972
- United States Senator from Delaware, 1973–2009
- Vice President of the United States, 2009–2017