Joe Biden served as the 47th vice president of the United States during the presidency of Barack Obama from January 20, 2009, to January 20, 2017. Biden, a member of the Democratic Party who previously served as a senior U.S. senator representing Delaware from 1973 to 2009, was selected as Obama's running mate and took office following their victory in the 2008 presidential election over Republican nominees John McCain and Sarah Palin. Four years later, in the 2012 presidential election, they defeated Republican nominees Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan, to win re-election. Biden was the first vice president from Delaware and the first Roman Catholic vice president in U.S. history.
Alongside Biden's vice presidency, the Democratic Party also held their majorities in the House of Representatives and the Senate during the 111th U.S. Congress following the 2008 elections, attained an overall federal government trifecta. Biden was more influential than most vice presidents due to his long Senate career and relationships with both members of Congress and politicians abroad. His relationship with Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell was particularly important after the Republicans regained control of Congress in the 2010 and 2014 elections, and the two were instrumental in ending the 2011 and 2013 debt-ceiling crises.
Near the end of his tenure, Biden didn't run for president as the Democratic nominee in the 2016 presidential election and endorsed Hillary Clinton, who became the nominee and selected junior Virginia senator Tim Kaine as her running mate. They lost the 2016 election to the Republican ticket of businessman Donald Trump and his running mate, Indiana governor Mike Pence. As vice president in his capacity as the president of the Senate, Biden oversaw the certification of Trump and Pence as the winners of the election on January 6, 2017. Obama and Biden were succeeded in office by Trump and Pence on January 20, 2017.
After his vice presidency, Biden would go on to become the second Catholic president following his victory in the 2020 presidential election. Biden and his running mate Kamala Harris defeated Republican incumbent president and vice president, Trump and Pence, making Biden the first president to serve with a woman vice president, Black American vice president, and Asian American vice president. Biden became the first vice president to be elected president since George H. W. Bush and first since Richard Nixon to have not been elected following the end of their tenure as vice president.
2008 presidential election Presidential campaign
After exploring running in several previous cycles, in January 2007, Biden declared his candidacy in the 2008 elections. Biden focused on the Iraq War, his record as chairman of major Senate committees, and his foreign-policy experience. Biden was noted for his one-liners during the campaign; in one debate he said of Republican candidate Rudy Giuliani, "There's only three things he mentions in a sentence: a noun, and a verb and 9/11."
Biden had difficulty raising funds, struggled to draw people to his rallies, and failed to gain traction against the high-profile candidacies of Obama and Hillary Clinton. He never rose above single digits in national polls of the Democratic candidates. In the first contest on January 3, 2008, Biden placed fifth in the Iowa caucuses, garnering slightly less than one percent of the state delegates. He withdrew from the race that evening.
Despite its lack of success, Biden's 2008 campaign raised his stature in the political world. In particular, it changed the relationship between Biden and Obama. Although they had served together on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, they had not been close: Biden resented Obama's quick rise to political stardom, while Obama viewed Biden as garrulous and patronizing. Having gotten to know each other during 2007, Obama appreciated Biden's campaign style and appeal to working-class voters, and Biden said he became convinced Obama was "the real deal".
Vice presidential campaign
In August 2008, Obama and Biden met in secret to discuss the possibility of a place for Biden in the Obama administration, and developed a strong personal rapport. On August 22, 2008, Obama announced that Biden would be his running mate. The New York Times reported that the choice reflected a desire for someone with foreign policy and national security experience. Others pointed out Biden's appeal to middle-class and blue-collar voters. Biden was officially nominated for vice president on August 27 at the 2008 Democratic National Convention in Denver.
Biden's vice-presidential campaigning gained little media attention, as the press devoted far more coverage to the Republican nominee, Alaska governor Sarah Palin. Under instructions from the campaign, Biden kept his speeches succinct and tried to avoid offhand remarks. Privately, Biden's remarks frustrated Obama. "How many times is Biden gonna say something stupid?", he asked. Obama campaign staffers called Biden's blunders "Joe bombs" and kept Biden uninformed about strategy discussions, which irked Biden. Relations between the two campaigns became strained for a month, until Biden apologized to Obama and the two built a stronger partnership.
In September 2008, during the 2008 financial crisis, Biden voted for the $700 billion Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, which passed in the Senate. On October 2, he participated in the vice-presidential debate with Palin at Washington University in St. Louis. Post-debate polls found that while Palin exceeded many voters' expectations, Biden had still won the debate overall. On November 4, Obama and Biden were elected.
As Biden was running for vice president, he was also running for reelection to the Senate, as permitted by Delaware law.Almanac of American Politics 2008, p. 366. Having been reelected to the Senate as well as the vice presidency, Biden made a point of not resigning from the Senate before he was sworn in for his seventh term in January 2009. He resigned from the Senate on January 15.
First term (2009–2013)
Biden's vice presidency succeeded the Vice presidency of Dick Cheney, which was controversial. Biden said he intended to eliminate some explicit roles assumed by George W. Bush's vice president, Dick Cheney, and did not intend to emulate any previous vice presidency. He was sworn in on January 20, 2009. He was the first vice president from Delaware and the first Roman Catholic vice president. Members of the Obama administration said Biden's role in the White House was to be a contrarian and force others to defend their positions. Rahm Emanuel, White House chief of staff, said that Biden helped counter groupthink. The Bidens maintained a relaxed atmosphere at their official residence in Washington, often entertaining their grandchildren, and regularly returned to their home in Delaware.
Biden visited Kosovo in May and affirmed the U.S. position that its "independence is irreversible". Biden lost an internal debate to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton about sending 21,000 new troops to Afghanistan, but his skepticism was valued, and in 2009, Biden's views gained more influence as Obama reconsidered his Afghanistan strategy. Biden visited Iraq about every two months, becoming the administration's point man in delivering messages to Iraqi leadership about expected progress there. More generally, overseeing Iraq policy became Biden's responsibility. By 2012, Biden had made eight trips there, but his oversight of U.S. policy in Iraq receded with the exit of U.S. troops in 2011.
Biden oversaw infrastructure spending from the Obama stimulus package intended to help counteract the ongoing recession. When he completed that role in February 2011, he said the number of fraud incidents with stimulus monies had been less than one percent.
Biden's off-message response to a question in April 2009, during the beginning of the swine flu outbreak, led to a swift retraction by the White House. The remark revived Biden's reputation for gaffes. Confronted with rising unemployment through July 2009, Biden acknowledged that the administration had "misread how bad the economy was", but maintained confidence the stimulus package would create many more jobs once the pace of expenditures picked up. A hot mic picked up Biden telling Obama that his signing the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act was "a big fucking deal" on March 23, 2010. Despite their different personalities, Obama and Biden formed a friendship, partly based around Obama's daughter Sasha and Biden's granddaughter Maisy, who attended Sidwell Friends School together.
Due to the large Democratic majority in Congress, Biden became the first vice president since Dan Quayle to cast zero tie-breaking votes as President of the Senate. Biden campaigned heavily for Democrats in the 2010 midterm elections, maintaining an attitude of optimism in the face of predictions of large-scale losses for the party. Following big Republican gains in the elections and the departure of Emanuel, Biden's past relationships with Republicans in Congress became more important. He led the successful administration effort to gain Senate approval for the New START treaty. In December 2010, Biden's advocacy for a middle ground, followed by his negotiations with Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell, were instrumental in producing the administration's compromise tax package that included a temporary extension of the Bush tax cuts. The package passed as the Tax Relief, Unemployment Insurance Reauthorization, and Job Creation Act of 2010.
Obama delegated Biden to lead negotiations with Congress in March 2011 to resolve federal spending levels and avoid a government shutdown. The U.S. debt ceiling crisis developed over the next few months, but Biden's relationship with McConnell again proved key in bringing about a deal to resolve it, in the form of the Budget Control Act of 2011. Some reports suggest that Biden opposed proceeding with the May 2011 U.S. mission to kill Osama bin Laden, lest failure adversely affect Obama's reelection prospects.
Obama named Biden to head the Gun Violence Task Force, created to address the causes of school shootings and consider possible gun control measures in the aftermath of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, in December 2012. Later that month, during the final days before the United States fell off the "fiscal cliff", Biden's relationship with McConnell again proved important as the two negotiated a deal that led to the American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012 being passed at the start of 2013.
2012 vice presidential campaign In a May 2012 Meet the Press interview, Vice President Biden reversed his previous position and publicly supported same-sex marriage, saying he was "absolutely comfortable with the fact that men marrying men, women marrying women, and heterosexual men and women marrying another are entitled to the same exact rights, all the civil rights, all the civil liberties. And quite frankly, I don't see much of a distinction beyond that." Prior to Biden's statement on Meet the Press, the Obama administration endorsed civil unions, but not same-sex marriage. Biden's decision reportedly forced Obama's hand, pressuring Obama to accelerate his own public shift to support same-sex marriage. In 2013, Section 3 of DOMA was ruled unconstitutional and partially struck down in United States v. Windsor. The Obama Administration did not defend the law and congratulated Windsor.
Second term (2013–2017)