Joe Biden’s first presidential campaign in 1988 ended in such disaster that veterans of that effort still call it the “'87 campaign” — a humbling nod to the fact that Biden dropped out before the calendar year of the actual election.
“I always tell my children: That campaign hung in there right up until the middle of the end of the beginning,” said Richard Martin, the Biden campaign’s deputy press secretary in Iowa.
Thirty-three years later, the humiliation of that early exit is still easy to remember. But it doesn’t sting as much, if at all. That’s what winning the presidency can do.
Biden’s arrival at the White House on Jan. 20 will be celebrated by many. But for a select group, it will be particularly sweet. Veterans of Biden’s first presidential campaign — a number of whom still work for him — have been reconnecting and reminiscing, talking about the long-awaited Biden presidency and how the candidate has changed or stayed the same since that first, painful run.
“He’s wiser, he’s more measured, you can see that,” said Martin, 58 and living in Des Moines, Iowa. “I think he’s not as quick tempered as he used to be.”
Those who worked on Biden’s first White House bid say his appeal remains similar now. And they credit it for helping him to defeat Donald Trump.
“A lot of politics is being in the right place at the right time,” said Ted Kaufman, Biden’s longtime aide, who has been with him since his first 1972 campaign. “The 1988 race wasn’t the right time and when Biden failed to get traction in 2008, many in his inner circle thought it was the end of his presidential ambitions. “2008 was going to be the end right? Obama was the right candidate and he wasn’t. But he’s just the perfect candidate for this year.”
Another characteristic that’s stayed the same, they say, is Biden’s punctuality, or lack thereof. “He was notoriously late,” recalls Doug Kelly, who worked for Biden as a press assistant in Iowa for his first job out of college.
And yet, at the time of his 1988 bid, Biden seemed like a man in a hurry. He was 44 years old. And though he had already been in the Senate for more than a decade by then, he entered the contest as the generational candidate, whose oratory and ambition seemed to outpace his accomplishments. His fundraising and polling rose over the summer. And, for a brief period, there was a notion that he was a Kennedy reincarnated. And then, he withered under the spotlight that came with it.
On Sept. 12, 1987, The New York Times’ Maureen Dowd reported that Biden had “lifted” a speech from British Labor Leader Neil Kinnock for his own closing address at the Iowa State Fair in August, without crediting Kinnock. Biden had used parts of Kinnock’s speech before with the proper citation. But, he said, he had forgotten to do so at the well-attended Iowa fair, where the national media was watching.
It snowballed from there. Four days later, the Times reported that Biden had also used a few Bobby Kennedy lines without attribution back in February. Two days after that, the Times reported that Biden had been caught plagiarizing in a law review article, which prompted a law school faculty investigation. The investigation concluded that Biden “used five pages from a published law review article without quotation or attribution.''
The stories hit Biden on a personal level.
“Of all the things to attack you on, Your integrity?” his wife Jill told him at the time on the verge of tears, Biden recalled in his 2007 memoir. “They were questioning the one thing she saw as my greatest strength—and something I would never be able to defend with words alone,” Biden wrote.
By Sept. 24, 1987, he had withdrawn from the race.
Veterans of the 1988 campaign say the series of scandals that undid Biden seem quaint nowadays. Back then, operatives to fellow candidate Michael Dukakis’ campaign were forced to resign for providing Dowd with a tape of Biden’s remarks at the Iowa State fair. Such “oppo hits” are now an everyday occurrence.
Though there was a sense of humiliation that he had been run from the race, a lot of Biden’s campaign team say they were undeterred by the early exit. Many went on to become some of the most influential people in Democratic politics. Several rejoined Biden in 2019 when he decided to run for president a third time. Many are set to become some of the most powerful people in the forthcoming Biden administration.
The ’88 campaign included Biden’s incoming chief of staff Ron Klain, senior adviser Mike Donilon, director of the White House Office of Presidential Personnel Cathy Russell, and Kaufman, who is the leader of Biden’s presidential transition. One enthusiastic endorser of Biden’s 1988 candidacy was a prominent lawyer in Mount Pleasant, Iowa, by the name of Tom Vilsack. Vilsack would go on to become the city’s mayor, the state’s governor and is now Biden’s nominee for secretary of Agriculture.
John Anzalone, a senior pollster for Biden’s 2020 campaign, was a 23-year-old Biden organizer in Iowa’s 4th District during the 1988 run.
“It took a little bit longer than we anticipated, but he’s still our guy,” Anzalone said. “For me, it was kind of bookends. Where I started, where I ended. Both times it was with the best boss I ever had, and it happened to be the same guy.”
The Biden operation also included Barack Obama’s former chief of staff Bill Daley, Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign manager David Wilhelm, along with Larry Grisolano, Doug Kelly, Mike Lux and Bruce Fisher, all of whom went on to have accomplished political careers.
“It’s very unusual that you would have a group that all came together 33 years ago, and you can look back on and say a lot of these people have emerged as leading lights in the Democratic Party in the United States,” said Wilhelm, Biden’s Iowa campaign manager in ’88. “I think that’s to Joe Biden’s credit, and I think it’s to the credit of the campaign.”
The solidarity of the Biden inner circle over decades underscores the loyalty the president-elect engenders. It also speaks to how insular his decision-making apparatus can sometimes be. That lack of new blood can, at times, lead Biden to be conventional and predictable. But that predictability also served Biden well as he built his candidacy in 2020 around the need for calm and a restoration of civility in the face of Trump.
The familial elements of Bidenism can be so pronounced that they literally result in marriage. The ’88 campaign was responsible for at least two of them, as both Wilhelm and Martin met their wives during that run for office. In 2007, when Biden was in Iowa running for president a second time, Martin’s daughter saw him at a cafe and told him matter-of-factly: “Excuse me Mr. Biden, I wanted to let you know that you’re partially responsible for me being here.” Biden was clearly confused by the proclamation. So she explained who her parents were.
“I knew that campaign had to have been good for something,” he responded.
With many from that era now set to take the reins of power, there have been conversations about a “Biden ’87” Washington reunion this upcoming year after the pandemic resides. “We’ll do something, something better than a damn Zoom meeting,” said Fisher, the campaign’s Iowa press secretary. “I personally want Anzo [Anzalone] to pay for it because he made all the big money on the campaign,” he added.
The Biden ’88 Iowa staffers have been chatting recently after Bruce Koeppl, the campaign’s political director in the state, died last week after months of health problems. Biden and Jill both called Koeppl’s widow this week, the Des Moines Register first reported.
The old aides have also been passing around old copies of the campaign’s monthly bulletin meant to resemble a newspaper — “The Biden Times: The Official Newspaper of the Iowa Campaign” — remarking on how much campaigns have changed since Biden first ran. In one section imitating a classified ad, they wrote “HELP WANTED: President of the United States. Must be experienced in foreign policy. Arms control a must. Send resumes to Iowa Democratic voters.”
Thirty-years later, Biden was finally hired.
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