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"Biden" and "Joseph Biden" redirect here. For his son Joseph Biden III, see Beau Biden. For other uses, see Biden

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Joe Biden
Joe Biden official portrait 2013 cropped.jpg
Official portrait, 2013
President-elect of the United States
Assuming office
January 20, 2021
Vice President Kamala Harris (elect)
Succeeding Donald Trump
47th Vice President of the United States
In office
January 20, 2009 – January 20, 2017
President Barack Obama
Preceded by Dick Cheney
Succeeded by Mike Pence
United States Senator
from Delaware
In office
January 3, 1973 – January 15, 2009
Preceded by J. Caleb Boggs
Succeeded by Ted Kaufman
Chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee
In office
January 3, 2007 – January 3, 2009
Preceded by Richard Lugar
Succeeded by John Kerry
In office
June 6, 2001 – January 3, 2003
Preceded by Jesse Helms
Succeeded by Richard Lugar
In office
January 3, 2001 – January 20, 2001
Preceded by Jesse Helms
Succeeded by Jesse Helms
Chair of the International Narcotics Control Caucus
In office
January 3, 2007 – January 3, 2009
Preceded by Chuck Grassley
Succeeded by Dianne Feinstein
Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee
In office
January 3, 1987 – January 3, 1995
Preceded by Strom Thurmond
Succeeded by Orrin Hatch
Member of the New Castle County Council
from the 4th district
In office
January 5, 1971 – January 1, 1973
Preceded by Henry R. Folsom
Succeeded by Francis R. Swift
Personal details
Born Joseph Robinette Biden Jr.
November 20, 1942 (age 78)
Scranton, Pennsylvania, U.S.
Political party Democratic
Spouse(s)
Neilia Hunter
​
​(m. 1966; died 1972)​
Jill Jacobs ​(m. 1977)​
Children
BeauHunterNaomiAshley
Parents
Joseph Robinette Biden Sr.
Catherine Eugenia Finnegan
Relatives Biden family
Education
University of Delaware (BA)
Syracuse University (JD)
Occupation
Politicianlawyerauthor
Awards List of honors and awards
Signature
Website joebiden.com
Joe Biden 2013.jpg
This article is part of
a series about
Joe Biden
Political positionsElectoral history
Early lifeEarly careerEponymsFamilyHonors
U.S. Senator from Delaware
TenureSenate Judiciary Committee Supreme Court hearings Robert BorkClarence Thomas1994 Crime BillViolence Against Women ActSenate Foreign Relations Committee
Vice presidency
TransitionTenureObama administrationEconomic policy Great Recession response2010 Tax Relief Act2011 debt-ceiling crisis responseFiscal cliff responseForeign policyTask forces Gun ViolenceWomen and GirlsProtect Students from Sexual Assault
Presidency-elect
TransitionInaugurationCabinetAppointmentsCOVID-19 Advisory Board
Presidential campaigns
Vice presidential campaigns
Published works
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Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. (/ˈbaɪdən/ BY-dən; born November 20, 1942) is an American politician who is the president-elect of the United States. Biden defeated incumbent president Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election. A member of the Democratic Party, Biden served as the 47th vice president during the Obama administration from 2009 to 2017. He represented Delaware in the United States Senate from 1973 to 2009.

Raised in Scranton, Pennsylvania, and New Castle County, Delaware, Biden studied at the University of Delaware before earning his law degree from Syracuse University in 1968. He was elected a New Castle County Councillor in 1970 and became the sixth-youngest senator in American history when he was elected to the U.S. Senate from Delaware in 1972, at the age of 29. Biden was a longtime member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and eventually became its chairman. He opposed the Gulf War in 1991 and supported expanding the NATO alliance into Eastern Europe and its intervention in the Yugoslav Wars of the 1990s. He supported the resolution authorizing the Iraq War in 2002, and later opposed the surge of U.S. troops in 2007. He also chaired the Senate Judiciary Committee from 1987 to 1995, dealing with drug policy, crime prevention, and civil liberties issues; led the effort to pass the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act and the Violence Against Women Act; and oversaw six U.S. Supreme Court confirmation hearings, including the contentious hearings for Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas. He ran unsuccessfully for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1988 and again in 2008.

Biden was reelected to the Senate six times, and was the fourth-most senior senator when he resigned to serve as Barack Obama's vice president after they won the 2008 presidential election; Obama and Biden were reelected in 2012. As vice president, Biden oversaw infrastructure spending in 2009 to counteract the Great Recession. His negotiations with congressional Republicans helped pass legislation including the 2010 Tax Relief Act, which resolved a taxation deadlock; the Budget Control Act of 2011, which resolved a debt ceiling crisis; and the American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012, which addressed the impending "fiscal cliff". He also led efforts to pass the United States–Russia New START treaty and helped formulate U.S. policy toward Iraq through the withdrawal of U.S. troops in 2011. Following the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, he led the Gun Violence Task Force. In January 2017, Obama awarded Biden the Presidential Medal of Freedom with distinction.

In April 2019, Biden announced his candidacy in the 2020 presidential election, and he reached the delegate threshold needed to secure the Democratic nomination in June 2020.[1] In August, he announced his choice of Senator Kamala Harris of California as his running mate. Biden is scheduled to be inaugurated as president on January 20, 2021.[2][3]

Contents
1 Early life (1942–1965)
2 First marriage, law school, and early career (1966–1972)
2.1 1972 U.S. Senate campaign in Delaware
2.2 Death of wife and daughter
3 U.S. Senate (1973–2009)
3.1 Second marriage
3.2 Early Senate activities
3.3 1988 presidential campaign
3.4 Brain surgeries
3.5 Senate Judiciary Committee
3.6 Senate Foreign Relations Committee
3.7 Reputation
3.8 2008 presidential campaign
4 2008 vice-presidential campaign
5 Vice president (2009–2017)
5.1 Reelection
5.2 Second term
5.3 Role in the 2016 presidential campaign
6 Post-vice presidency
7 2020 presidential campaign
7.1 Speculation and announcement
7.2 Campaign
7.3 Allegations of inappropriate physical contact
8 President-elect of the United States
9 Political positions
10 Distinctions
11 Electoral history
12 Publications
13 Notes
14 References
14.1 Citations
14.2 Sources
15 External links
15.1 Official
15.2 Other
Early life (1942–1965)
See also: Family of Joe Biden

Biden at age 10 (1953)
Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. was born November 20, 1942, at St. Mary's Hospital in Scranton, Pennsylvania,[4]:5 to Catherine Eugenia "Jean" Biden (née Finnegan) and Joseph Robinette Biden Sr.[5][6] The oldest child in a Catholic family, he has a sister, Valerie, and two brothers, Francis and James.[4]:9 Jean was of Irish descent,[7][8][4]:8 while Joseph Sr. had English, French, and Irish ancestry.[9][4]:8

Biden's father was initially wealthy but suffered financial setbacks around the time Biden was born,[10][11][12] and for several years the family lived with Biden's maternal grandparents.[13] Scranton fell into economic decline during the 1950s and Biden's father could not find steady work.[14] Beginning in 1953, the family lived in an apartment in Claymont, Delaware, then moved to a house in Wilmington, Delaware.[13] Biden Sr. later became a successful used car salesman, maintaining the family in a middle-class lifestyle.[13][14][15]

At Archmere Academy in Claymont,[4]:27, 32 Biden was a standout halfback and wide receiver on the high school football team;[13][16] he also played baseball.[13] Though a poor student, he was class president in his junior and senior years.[4]:40–41[17]:99 He graduated in 1961.[4]:40–41

At the University of Delaware in Newark, Biden briefly played freshman football[18][19] and earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1965 with a double major in history and political science, and a minor in English.[20][17]:98 He had a C average and ranked 506th in his class of 688.[21][22]

Biden has a stutter, which has improved since his early twenties.[23] He says he has reduced it by reciting poetry before a mirror,[17]:99[24] but it has been suggested that it affected his performance in the 2020 Democratic Party presidential debates.[25]

First marriage, law school, and early career (1966–1972)

Biden in the University of Delaware's 1965 yearbook
On August 27, 1966, Biden married Neilia Hunter (1942–1972), a student at Syracuse University,[20] after overcoming her parents' reluctance for her to wed a Roman Catholic; the ceremony was held in a Catholic church in Skaneateles, New York.[26] They had three children: Joseph R. "Beau" Biden III (1969–2015), Robert Hunter Biden (born 1970), and Naomi Christina "Amy" Biden (1971–1972).[20]

In 1968, Biden earned a Juris Doctor from Syracuse University College of Law, ranked 76th in his class of 85,[21][22] and was admitted to the Delaware bar in 1969.[27] While in school, he received student draft deferments,[28] and afterward was classified as unavailable for military service due to asthma.[28][29]

In 1968, Biden clerked at a Wilmington law firm headed by prominent local Republican William Prickett and, he later said, "thought of myself as a Republican".[30][31] He disliked incumbent Democratic Delaware governor Charles L. Terry's conservative racial politics and supported a more liberal Republican, Russell W. Peterson, who defeated Terry in 1968.[30] Biden was recruited by local Republicans but registered as an Independent because of his distaste for Republican presidential candidate Richard Nixon.[30]

In 1969, Biden practiced law first as a public defender and then at a firm headed by a locally active Democrat[32][30] who named him to the Democratic Forum, a group trying to reform and revitalize the state party;[4]:86 Biden subsequently reregistered as a Democrat.[30] He and another attorney also formed a law firm.[32] Corporate law, however, did not appeal to him, and criminal law did not pay well.[13] He supplemented his income by managing properties.[33]

In 1970, Biden ran for the 4th District Seat on the New Castle County Council on a liberal platform that included support for public housing in the suburbs.[4]:59[32][34] The seat had been held by Republican Henry R. Folsom, who was running in the 5th District following a reapportionment of council districts.[35][36][37] Biden won the general election, and took office on January 5, 1971[38][39] He served until January 1, 1973, and was succeeded by Democrat Francis R. Swift.[40][41][42][43] During his time on the county council, Biden opposed large highway projects he argued might disrupt Wilmington neighborhoods.[4]:62

1972 U.S. Senate campaign in Delaware
Main article: 1972 United States Senate election in Delaware

Results of the 1972 U.S. Senate election in Delaware
In 1972, Biden defeated Republican incumbent J. Caleb Boggs to become the junior U.S. senator from Delaware. He was the only Democrat willing to challenge Boggs.[32] His campaign had almost no money, and he was given no chance of winning.[13] Family members managed and staffed the campaign, which relied on meeting voters face-to-face and hand-distributing position papers,[44] an approach made feasible by Delaware's small size.[33] He received some help from the AFL–CIO and Democratic pollster Patrick Caddell.[32] His platform focused on withdrawal from Vietnam, the environment, civil rights, mass transit, more equitable taxation, health care, and public dissatisfaction with "politics as usual".[32][44] A few months before the election Biden trailed Boggs by almost thirty percentage points,[32] but his energy, attractive young family, and ability to connect with voters' emotions worked to his advantage,[15] and he won with 50.5 percent of the vote.[44]

Death of wife and daughter
On December 18, 1972, a few weeks after the election, Biden's wife Neilla and one-year-old daughter Naomi were killed in an automobile accident while Christmas shopping in Hockessin, Delaware.[20][45] Neilia's station wagon was hit by a tractor-trailer truck as she pulled out from an intersection. Their sons Beau and Hunter survived the accident and were taken to the hospital in fair condition, Beau with a broken leg and other wounds, and Hunter with a minor skull fracture and other head injuries.[4]:93, 98 Doctors soon said both would make full recoveries.[4]:96 Biden considered resigning to care for them,[15] but Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield persuaded him not to.[46]

Years later, Biden said he had heard that the truck driver allegedly drank alcohol before the collision. The driver's family denied that claim, and the police never substantiated it. Biden later apologized to the family.[47][48][49][50][51]

U.S. Senate (1973–2009)
Main article: United States Senate career of Joe Biden
Second marriage

Biden and his second wife, Jill, met in 1975 and married in 1977.
Biden was sworn in on January 5, 1973, by secretary of the Senate Francis R. Valeo at the Delaware Division of the Wilmington Medical Center.[52][4]:93, 98 Present were his sons Beau (whose leg was still in traction from the automobile accident) and Hunter and other family members.[52][4]:93, 98 At 30, he was the sixth-youngest senator in U.S. history.[53][54]

To see his sons every day,[55] Biden commuted by train between his Delaware home and Washington, D.C.—90 minutes each way—and maintained this habit throughout his 36 years in the Senate.[15] But the accident had filled him with anger and religious doubt. He wrote later that he "felt God had played a horrible trick" on him,[56] and he had trouble focusing on work.[57][58]

Biden credits his second wife, teacher Jill Tracy Jacobs, with the renewal of his interest in politics and life;[59] they met in 1975 on a blind date[60] and were married at the United Nations chapel in New York on June 17, 1977.[61][62] They are Roman Catholics and attend Mass at St. Joseph's on the Brandywine in Greenville, Delaware.[63] Their daughter Ashley Blazer (born 1981)[20] is a social worker.[64] Beau Biden became an Army Judge Advocate in Iraq and later Delaware Attorney General;[65] he died of brain cancer in 2015.[66][67] Hunter Biden is a Washington attorney and lobbyist.[68]

From 1991 to 2008, Biden co-taught a seminar on constitutional law at Widener University School of Law.[69] The seminar often had a waiting list. Biden sometimes flew back from overseas to teach the class.[70][71][72][73]

Early Senate activities

Biden with President Jimmy Carter
During his early years in the Senate, Biden focused on consumer protection and environmental issues and called for greater government accountability.[74] In a 1974 interview, he described himself as liberal on civil rights and liberties, senior citizens' concerns and healthcare but conservative on other issues, including abortion and the military conscription.[75]

In his first decade in the Senate, Biden focused on arms control.[76][77] After Congress failed to ratify the SALT II Treaty signed in 1979 by Soviet premier Leonid Brezhnev and President Jimmy Carter, Biden met with Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko to communicate American concerns, and secured changes that addressed the Senate Foreign Relations Committee's objections.[78] When the Reagan administration wanted to interpret the 1972 SALT I treaty loosely to allow development of the Strategic Defense Initiative, Biden argued for strict adherence to the treaty.[76] He received considerable attention when he excoriated Secretary of State George Shultz at a Senate hearing for the Reagan administration's support of South Africa despite its continued policy of apartheid.[30]

Biden shaking hands with President Ronald Reagan, 1984
Biden became ranking minority member of the Senate Judiciary Committee in 1981. In 1984, he was a Democratic floor manager for the successful passage of the Comprehensive Crime Control Act; over time, the law's tough-on-crime provisions became controversial and in 2019, Biden called his role in passing the bill a "big mistake".[79][80] His supporters praised him for modifying some of the law's worst provisions, and it was his most important legislative accomplishment to that time.[81] This bill included the Federal Assault Weapons Ban[82][83] and the Violence Against Women Act,[84] which he has called his most significant legislation.[85]

In 1993, Biden voted for a provision that deemed homosexuality incompatible with military life, thereby banning gays from serving in the armed forces.[86][87][88] In 1996, he voted for the Defense of Marriage Act, which prohibited the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriages, thereby barring individuals in such marriages from equal protection under federal law and allowing states to do the same.[89] In 2015, the act was ruled unconstitutional in Obergefell v. Hodges.[90]

Opposition to busing
In the mid-1970s, Biden was one of the Senate's leading opponents of race-integration busing. His Delaware constituents strongly opposed it, and such opposition nationwide later led his party to mostly abandon school integration policies.[91] In his first Senate campaign, Biden had expressed support for busing to remedy de jure segregation, as in the South, but opposed its use to remedy de facto segregation arising from racial patterns of neighborhood residency, as in Delaware; he opposed a proposed constitutional amendment banning busing entirely.[92]

In May 1974, Biden voted to table a proposal containing anti-busing and anti-desegregation clauses but later voted for a modified version containing a qualification that it was not intended to weaken the judiciary's power to enforce the 5th Amendment and 14th Amendment.[93] In 1975, he supported a proposal that would have prevented the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare from cutting federal funds to districts that refused to integrate;[94] he said busing was a "bankrupt idea [violating] the cardinal rule of common sense" and that his opposition would make it easier for other liberals to follow suit.[81] At the same time he supported initiatives on housing, job opportunities and voting rights.[93] Biden supported a measure[when?] forbidding the use of federal funds for transporting students beyond the school closest to them. In 1977, he co-sponsored an amendment closing loopholes in that measure, which President Carter signed into law in 1978.[95]

1988 presidential campaign
Main article: Joe Biden 1988 presidential campaign

Biden at the White House in 1987
Biden formally declared his candidacy for the 1988 Democratic presidential nomination on June 9, 1987.[96] He was considered a strong candidate because of his moderate image, his speaking ability, his high profile as chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee at the upcoming Robert Bork Supreme Court nomination hearings, and his appeal to Baby Boomers; he would have been the second-youngest person elected president, after John F. Kennedy.[30][97][17]:83 He raised more in the first quarter of 1987 than any other candidate.[97][17]:83

By August his campaign's messaging had become confused due to staff rivalries,[17]:108–109 and in September, he was accused of plagiarizing a speech by British Labour Party leader Neil Kinnock.[98] Biden's speech had similar lines about being the first person in his family to go to university. Biden had credited Kinnock with the formulation on previous occasions,[99][100] but did not on two occasions in late August.[101]:230–232[100] Earlier that year he had also used passages from a 1967 speech by Robert F. Kennedy (for which his aides took blame) and a short phrase from John F. Kennedy's inaugural address; two years earlier he had used a 1976 passage by Hubert Humphrey.[102] Biden responded that politicians often borrow from one another without giving credit, and that one of his rivals for the nomination, Jesse Jackson, had called him to point out that he (Jackson) had used the same material by Humphrey that Biden had used.[15][103]

A few days later an incident in law school in which he drew text from a Fordham Law Review article with inadequate citations was publicized.[103] Biden was required to repeat the course and passed with high marks.[104] At Biden's request the Delaware Supreme Court's Board of Professional Responsibility reviewed the incident and concluded that he had violated no rules.[105]

He also made several false or exaggerated claims about his early life: that he had earned three degrees in college, that he had attended law school on a full scholarship, that he had graduated in the top half of his class,[106][107] and that he had marched in the civil rights movement.[108] The limited amount of other news about the race amplified these revelations[109] and on September 23, 1987, Biden withdrew from the race, saying his candidacy had been overrun by "the exaggerated shadow" of his past mistakes.[110]

Brain surgeries
In February 1988, after several episodes of increasingly severe neck pain, Biden was taken by ambulance to Walter Reed Army Medical Center for surgery to correct a leaking intracranial berry aneurysm.[111][112] While recuperating he suffered a pulmonary embolism, a serious complication.[112]

After a second aneurysm was surgically repaired in May,[112][113] Biden's recuperation kept him away from the Senate for seven months.[114]

Senate Judiciary Committee

Biden speaking at the signing of the 1994 Crime Bill with President Bill Clinton in 1994
Biden was a longtime member of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary. He chaired it from 1987 to 1995 and was ranking minority member from 1981 to 1987 and from 1995 to 1997.

As chairman, Biden presided over two highly contentious U.S. Supreme Court confirmation hearings.[15] When Robert Bork was nominated in 1988, Biden reversed his approval‍—‌given in an interview the previous year‍—‌of a hypothetical Bork nomination. Conservatives were angered,[115] but at the hearings' close Biden was praised for his fairness, humor and courage.[115][116] Rejecting the arguments of some Bork opponents,[15] Biden framed his objections to Bork in terms of the conflict between Bork's strong originalism and the view that the U.S. Constitution provides rights to liberty and privacy beyond those explicitly enumerated in its text.[116] Bork's nomination was rejected in the committee by a 9–5 vote[116] and then in the full Senate, 58–42.[117]

During Clarence Thomas's nomination hearings in 1991, Biden's questions on constitutional issues were often convoluted to the point that Thomas sometimes lost track of them,[118] and Thomas later wrote that Biden's questions had been akin to "beanballs".[119] After the committee hearing closed, the public learned that Anita Hill, a University of Oklahoma law school professor, had accused Thomas of making unwelcome sexual comments when they had worked together.[120][121] Biden had known of some of these charges, but had initially shared them only with the committee because Hill had then been unwilling to testify.[15] The committee hearing was reopened and Hill testified, but Biden did not permit testimony from other witnesses, such as a woman who had made similar charges and experts on harassment;[122] Biden said he wanted to preserve Thomas's privacy and the hearings' decency.[118][122] The full Senate confirmed Thomas by a 52–48 vote, with Biden opposed.[15] Liberal legal advocates and women's groups felt strongly that Biden had mishandled the hearings and not done enough to support Hill.[122] Biden later sought out women to serve on the Judiciary Committee and emphasized women's issues in the committee's legislative agenda.[15] In 2019, he told Hill he regretted his treatment of her, but Hill said afterward she remained unsatisfied.[123]

Biden was critical of Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr during the 1990s Whitewater controversy and Lewinsky scandal investigations, saying "it's going to be a cold day in hell" before another independent counsel would be granted similar powers.[124] He voted to acquit during the impeachment of President Clinton.[125] During the 2000s, Biden sponsored bankruptcy legislation sought by credit card issuers.[15] President Bill Clinton vetoed the bill in 2000, but it passed in 2005 as the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act,[15] with Biden one of only 18 Democrats to vote for it, while leading Democrats and consumer rights organizations opposed it.[126] As a senator, Biden strongly supported increased Amtrak funding and rail security.[127][128]

Senate Foreign Relations Committee
Biden was also a longtime member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He became its ranking minority member in 1997, and chaired it from June 2001 to 2003 and 2007 to 2009.[129] His positions were generally liberal internationalist.[76][130] He collaborated effectively with Republicans and sometimes went against elements of his own party.[129][130] During this time he met with at least 150 leaders from 60 countries and international organizations, becoming a well-known Democratic voice on foreign policy.[131]

Biden voted against authorization for the Gulf War in 1991,[130] siding with 45 of the 55 Democratic senators; he said the U.S. was bearing almost all the burden in the anti-Iraq coalition.[132]

Senator Biden accompanied President Clinton and other officials to Bosnia and Herzegovina in December 1997.
Biden became interested in the Yugoslav Wars after hearing about Serb abuses during the Croatian War of Independence in 1991.[76] Once the Bosnian War broke out, Biden was among the first to call for the "lift and strike" policy of lifting the arms embargo, training Bosnian Muslims and supporting them with NATO air strikes, and investigating war crimes.[76][129] The George H. W. Bush administration and Clinton administration were both reluctant to implement the policy, fearing Balkan entanglement.[76][130] In April 1993, Biden spent a week in the Balkans and held a tense three-hour meeting with Serbian leader Slobodan Milošević.[133] Biden related that he had told Milošević, "I think you're a damn war criminal and you should be tried as one."[133]

Biden wrote an amendment in 1992 to compel the Bush administration to arm the Bosnians, but deferred in 1994 to a somewhat softer stance the Clinton administration preferred, before signing on the following year to a stronger measure sponsored by Bob Dole and Joe Lieberman.[133] The engagement led to a successful NATO peacekeeping effort.[76] Biden has called his role in affecting Balkans policy in the mid-1990s his "proudest moment in public life" related to foreign policy.[130]

In 1999, during the Kosovo War, Biden supported the 1999 NATO bombing of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.[76] He co-sponsored with John McCain the McCain-Biden Kosovo Resolution, which called on President Clinton to use all necessary force, including ground troops, to confront Milošević over Yugoslav actions toward ethnic Albanians in Kosovo.[130][134]

Biden was a strong supporter of the 2001 war in Afghanistan, saying, "Whatever it takes, we should do it."[135] As head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Biden said in 2002 that Saddam Hussein was a threat to national security and there was no option but to "eliminate" that threat.[136]

In October 2002, he voted in favor of the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq, approving the U.S. invasion of Iraq.[130] As chair of the committee, he assembled a series of witnesses to testify in favor of the authorization. They gave testimony grossly misrepresenting the intent, history and status of Saddam and his secular government, which was an avowed enemy of al-Qaida, and touting Iraq's fictional possession of weapons of mass destruction.[137]

Biden eventually became a critic of the war and viewed his vote and role as a "mistake", but did not push for U.S. withdrawal.[130][133] He supported the appropriations to pay for the occupation, but argued repeatedly that the war should be internationalized, that more soldiers were needed, and that the Bush administration should "level with the American people" about the cost and length of the conflict.[129][134]

Biden addresses the press after meeting with Prime Minister Ayad Allawi in Baghdad in 2004
By late 2006, Biden's stance had shifted considerably, and he opposed the troop surge of 2007,[130][133] saying General David Petraeus was "dead, flat wrong" in believing the surge could work.[138] Biden instead advocated dividing Iraq into a loose federation of three ethnic states.[139] In November 2006, Biden and Leslie H. Gelb, president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, released a comprehensive strategy to end sectarian violence in Iraq.[140] Rather than continuing the present approach or withdrawing, the plan called for "a third way": federalizing Iraq and giving Kurds, Shiites, and Sunnis "breathing room" in their own regions.[4]:572–573 In September 2007, a non-binding resolution endorsing such a scheme passed the Senate,[140] but the idea was unfamiliar, had no political constituency, and failed to gain traction.[138] Iraq's political leadership denounced the resolution as de facto partitioning of the country, and the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad issued a statement distancing itself from it.[140] In May 2008, he sharply criticized President George W. Bush for a speech to Israel's Knesset in which he compared some Democrats to Western leaders who appeased Hitler before World War II; Biden called the speech "bullshit", "malarkey", and "outrageous". He later apologized for his language.[141]