Opinion | Joe Biden doesnt get it

Publish date: 2024-07-19

C’mon, Joe. You’re so close to getting this right — you just need to take another step or two.

In some of the photos, Joe Biden is behind the women, his hands on their shoulders, as he whispers in their ears. He embraces Hillary Clinton, his hands around her torso. He kisses a young girl’s head, his fingers framing her face, as she looks blankly toward the camera.

This affectionate and sometimes intimate physical style is one of the former vice president’s trademarks, a defining feature of the warm and upbeat persona he has built during more than four decades in the national spotlight. But the appropriateness of Biden’s physical behavior toward women is now being questioned, after a female Democratic politician penned a viral Internet piece describing an alleged 2014 encounter that left her offended and uncomfortable.

Right now, Biden and his advisers are trying to handle this in a way that will minimize the controversy, which is of course what any politician would do. But there’s an important way in which he’s failing, and it’s particularly ironic given the brand Biden has built for himself. He’s supposed to be the empathetic politician, the one who’s in touch with ordinary people, who “connects,” who creates intimacy. And yet empathy is precisely where he’s falling short.

The politician calling Biden out is Lucy Flores, who describes what happened backstage at an event he was doing for her when she was the Democratic nominee for lieutenant governor of Nevada. As she was waiting to go on, she says, Biden came up behind her and put his hands on her shoulders. “I felt him get closer to me from behind. He leaned further in and inhaled my hair. I was mortified. ... He proceeded to plant a big slow kiss on the back of my head.”

One other woman just came forward with a similar story. And there will probably be more.

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What distinguishes this controversy from others like it is that although Biden says he doesn’t remember his interaction with Flores that way, that doesn’t really matter, because he has done the same things many times before. On camera. He holds on to women and girls (not men and boys) — their shoulders, their waists — and sometimes thrusts his nose into their hair, just as Flores describes. There might be a kiss. Here’s a photo of him from the same event he attended with Flores, nuzzling up to Eva Longoria.

This isn't some kind of secret, because it's something he does in public. For years people have been debating just how problematic it is. But given that it's 2019 and Biden may well be running for president, that discussion has to be had out in the open.

In response to Flores' story, Biden released a statement that included this:

In my many years on the campaign trail and in public life, I have offered countless handshakes, hugs, expressions of affection, support and comfort. And not once — never — did I believe I acted inappropriately. If it is suggested I did so, I will listen respectfully. But it was never my intention.

I may not recall these moments the same way, and I may be surprised at what I hear. But we have arrived at an important time when women feel they can and should relate their experiences, and men should pay attention. And I will.

Biden is circling around the right response here, but he can’t quite make it all the way. First, he wants to assure us that he’s not some kind of serial abuser like the late senator Strom Thurmond (R-S.C.). Every woman in Washington knew that if you found yourself in an elevator or hallway with Thurmond, his hands would inevitably find their way to your butt or your breasts; I personally know half a dozen women who were groped by him. Biden is indeed nothing like that.

But when he says “it was never my intention” to act inappropriately, it doesn’t mean very much. Everybody thinks their intentions are good, and in a situation like this his intentions are not what’s at issue. This isn’t about whether he committed a crime, and he’s not even being accused of sexual harassment as it’s usually defined. As Flores said, “Frankly, my point was never about his intentions, and they shouldn’t be about his intentions. It should be about the women on the receiving end of that behavior.”

That is what is missing from everything he has said so far. What we need to hear from Biden is that he understands why he made women uncomfortable. We don’t need to hear that he didn’t intend to make women uncomfortable. They did feel that way. That’s what matters.

We’ve all had this experience in life, or at least we should have: We do or say something we don’t realize is insulting or offensive or hurtful or discomforting, and someone says, “Hey, that wasn’t cool.” When that happens, it’s a universal impulse to say, “No, no, I didn’t mean it that way.” In a frank conversation, the response will be, “Maybe you didn’t, but the effect was the same.” So you should be able to say, “I get it now. I’m sorry.”

It's important that we allow politicians the room to expand their understanding and apologize, just as we should do for people in our lives. So what Biden has to do is show that he understands what these encounters would have felt like from the perspective of the women and girls. Some of them were fine with it, and Biden's aides have come out to testify that he's been an advocate for women. That's great.

But there are other people like Flores who are horrified when Biden puts his hands on them, buries his face in their hair, and plants a kiss on them. So he has to say that he understands that he doesn’t have the right to do that to people without their consent. You can be friendly and affectionate without being creepy and invasive. To show he gets it, Biden has to see these encounters from the perspective of the women. It shouldn’t be that hard.

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Opinion | Joe Biden doesnt get it