Joe Biden’s long-running no apology tour hits the MeToo era
By Matt Viser Matt Viser National political reporter Email Bio Follow April 4 at 7:09 PM Joe Biden hasn’t offered a full-throated apology for his treatment of Anita Hill in the 1990s. He hasn’t backed away from his view that busing was the wrong way to integrate schools in the 1970s, nor has he denounced his decades-old positions on banning federal funding for abortion services.
Former vice president Joe Biden at a 2014 event with Democratic candidate for lieutenant governor Lucy Flores, who said last week that Biden had touched her inappropriately. Throughout his decades in public life, Biden has never been one to freely offer apologies, particularly when he is confronted with charges that cut to his character or a personal decision.
On the day he announced his next presidential campaign, in 2007, he was besieged by criticism for calling then-Sen. Barack Obama “the first mainstream African American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy.”“I really regret some have taken totally out of context my use of the word ‘clean,’ ” he said.
“I regret and — although it’s not a part of what I’m supposed to say — I apologize it took me 48 years to get here,” Biden said before marching across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, where civil rights activists in 1965 were attacked by police. “I should have been here. It’s one of the regrets that I have and many in my generation have.”
The comment triggered more criticism from those who said that he wasn’t taking ownership of his actions. He, after all, could have done something: He was the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee and presiding over the hearings. One reason Biden has had trouble apologizing is that the criticism lands at the core of who Biden is, those close to him say. He is affectionate and, to his supporters, that is what makes him so likable.
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