Frost/Biden

This is an edited version of a David Frost/Joe Biden interview in 1987 which was nearly lost. As explained by Wilfred, one of David's sons who took over their father's company, the original was nearly lost. In 1987 David Frost had set about interviewing all the probable contenders for the presidency for a TV series. In the event, Biden had dropped out of the Democrat race before the series was broadcast. Much material was discarded by the brothers in rationalising Paradine after their father's death but later out of the blue came a message from a hitherto unknown resource that they had, among other things, the master - and sole surviving - tape of over two hours' worth of Biden interviews.

The headline moment comes towards the end, when Biden quotes Neil Kinnock - by name - approvingly for his "first Kinnock in a thousand years" speech. If he had been as honest in his later platform speech about the source of his text (which he clearly sympathised with) Biden might not have been driven out of that year's presidential race for his plagiarism. On the other hand, the pause allowed him to have diagnosed and remedied the brain aneurysms which might have killed him.

Current TV portraits of Biden mention his record of achieving cross-party consensus as a young senator. His pride in doing so comes across in these interviews. In 1987, he also aspired to bring America together as a community. A generation on and after four years of Trumpism, that is going to be more difficult to achieve.

One revelation was that Biden took pride in his attention to detail in preparing papers for the Senate and in his earlier legal career. He would not like to have been thought of as a technocrat, but, while inevitably losing that fierce concentration one has when younger, one would expect him to become as expert as he need be in dealing with the problems which face a president. 

There were touching personal moments, too, as Frost probed Biden's feelings about recovering from the death of his first wife. His second wife, Jill, joined him for these.

The podcast is well worth listening to.