printIn what deluded universe can it be said that Vice President Joe Biden is a champion of the working class? Notwithstanding Biden’s alleged humble origins, the man has been a pampered member of the “oink sector” (government) since 1972.
To be fair, it’s not Biden who insists his roots are in the working class; it’s his acolytes across the media. Not much has changed since 2008, when Steve Chapman debunked the man-of-the people myth:
…the legend of Joe Biden, born in a welding shop, dies hard with political reporters, who find it easier to romanticize a gritty, hardscrabble childhood than a conventionally comfortable one.
The facts are there for anyone who wants to look at them. When Joe Biden Sr. died in 2002, his obituary in the News-Journal of Wilmington reported that when he married in 1941, “he was working as a sales representative for Amoco Oil Co. in Harrisburg.”
It went on, “Biden also was an executive in a Boston-based company that supplied waterproof sealant for U.S. merchant marine ships built during World War II. After the war, he co-owned an airport and crop-dusting service on Long Island.” Upon moving his family to Delaware, the News-Journal said, Biden “worked in the state first as a sales manager for auto dealerships and later in real-estate condominium sales.”
Executive, co-owner and manager? Those titles identify the jobholder as solidly middle class, if not better.
They fall in the category of white-collar occupations, not blue-collar.
And Biden Sr. clearly knew the difference. In his book, “Promises to Keep,” Biden writes that his father was “the most elegantly dressed, perfectly manicured, perfectly tailored car sales manager Wilmington, Del., had ever seen.”
Biden notes that he himself could have gone to the best public high school in Delaware. Instead, he enrolled at Archmere Academy, a Catholic prep school that made him think he had “died and gone to Yale.” He took a summer job to help pay the steep tuition, which today amounts to $18,450 a year.
…So where did he get his working-class reputation? Partly it comes from Biden’s streetwise demeanor and his preoccupation with the fact that his family wasn’t as well-off as some of the people he knew — which seems to have given him a permanent chip on his shoulder. Partly it comes from his frequent tributes to blue-collar folks, such as the firefighters who took him to the hospital when he suffered an aneurysm.
But mostly it reflects journalists’ weakness for simple, vivid narratives. It’s easy to write about a statesman who worked his way up from a log cabin. It’s easy to write about a leader who came from great wealth. But someone growing up the son of a sales manager is a bit lacking in color and drama.