Now that Joe Biden is certain to be the Democratic nominee and has a 50% chance at least of being the next president of the United States, my mind wandered back to the day I met him in Switzerland 17 years ago.
I was among the most junior of junior producers in the BBC at the time - effectively a ‘meet and greet’ or ‘pump and grin’, to pick up guests at the studio door and ensure they had a paper to read and coffee to sip before they were put on air. My then editor, who rated me as highly as gastroenteritis, needed a gopher for the beeb’s coverage at the annual pilgrimage for the rich and well connected, the World Economic Forum and asked me to do it because doubtless someone else was either unwell or their passport had expired.
As I couldn't be trusted to book anything more taxing than a restaurant, a more seasoned producer registered me for the WEF and booked all the flights and accommodation (this was a chalet with a pullout bed in my case). Amazingly and certainly by accident, I ended up with much better accreditation than I deserved: a white delegates badge. These prized cards cost around $20,000 each and there was no way the BBC would fork out that for my presence. To this day I'm convinced that the badge should have gone to the billionaire investor Joe Lewis and I try to imagine the look on his face when surley Swiss security guards refused to allow him into the conference with his peach-coloured media badge that had been destined for me.
Don't worry I'm getting to how Joe Biden ruffled feathers in the Alps.
So where was I? I know. I was enjoying ice driving on a frozen lake in an Audi S8, sampling the finest champagne courtesy of the richest banks in the world and meeting the most important humans on Earth in those days - including Bill & Hilary Clinton and a rather lonely Secretary General of OPEC. You see my white Badge literally gave me Carte Blanche to almost every single posh event and ‘do’ that was being held in Davos that year. This more than aggravated the far more senior BBC correspondent for whom I was supposed to be working and who was barred from attending all the events that I glided into. She exploded at me on the final day and told me to ‘buck up my ideas’. I almost spilled some of my caviar listening to her rant on the phone.
Before that verbal explosion happened, I was attending a discussion in one of the smaller halls in the convention centre about Geopolitics. I attended because the world - especially Britain and the US - were preparing for war with Iraq. George W Bush wasn't in Davos but he sent his Secretary of State Colin Powell to ‘sell’ the war to a very dubious Europe (this was well before anyone cared what China, India or Russia thought). I imagine that General Powell doesn't reminisce fondly about those days peddling nonsense about clear and present danger as well as WMD.
Powell was thus keen to leave Europe and go back to the hawks in Washington as quickly as possible and as such cancelled his attendance at the event I was due to see about Geopolitics. A US Senator from Delaware was there though and I went along for a look. He was unknown in Europe but very well known in Washington as the chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee which had held hearings about the Iraq war build-up and heard mostly from those who supported it.
In Davos, he was charming, entertaining, well read, well travelled, well tanned, and in total command of the room. He was a hit.
As a Democrat, he was ostensibly less of a warmonger than the Cheney/Rumsfeld/Wolfowitz Republicans but had voted in favour of the invasion. And, as an American public representative, he was also disinclined to attack his own nation’s policies while overseas. He gave a wordy fireside-chat-of-a-reason why Saddam had to be disarmed to his sceptical mostly European and Middle Eastern audience. He has since distanced himself from his own stance on that war.
But it was the metaphor he used to describe US-European relations that I thought was worth retelling. He paced the stage like a tiger saying that the transatlantic relationship with respect to the planned Iraqi invasion, was akin to a dysfunctional marriage.
President Obama presents Biden with the Presidential Medal of Freedom with Distinction, January 12, 2017
“Imagine if you will, a husband coming home from work,’ said the Senator who would be Vice President 5½ years later, ‘seeing a brand new Porsche parked in the driveway as he arrived back at 6pm. In a functioning (or dare I say new) relationship, the husband would stay calm and serenely inquire of his beloved wife: ‘Honey, I can't remember discussing buying a brand new sports car. Are you sure we need it or can afford it?’”
Joe paused his pacing to deliver his punchline.
“Instead, this transatlantic couple is in bad shape and tends to jump to angry conclusions. So in this case, the husband would shout at his spendthrift wife: ‘You stupid dumbass bitch.’”
I collared Sen Biden at the end for a chat with this memorable lawmaker on the pretence that we wanted an interview with him for the BBC. He said no thanks and rushed to do something else - possibly even driving on ice. Even though I was of no use to him politically, he still stayed to chat. We spoke about his Irish roots and about W.B. Yeats.
I have followed his career with great interest ever since.
