CAN JOE BIDEN BUILD A BETTER AMERICA?

There’s a story Joe Biden likes to tell. You may have heard it. In fact, he knows you’ve heard it, but he’s just going to tell it anyway.

“I was being dropped off by my dad, on his way to work, at the City Hall, because I wanted to get an application to be a lifeguard in a city swimming pool,” the former vice president recalled over the phone in late June, about the summer of 1962 in Wilmington, Del. “As I was getting out of the car, two very well-dressed men leaned over [at] the stoplight… and they kissed one another. I turned and looked at my dad, and he just looked back and he said, ‘Joey, it’s simple. They love each other.’ That was it. No other explanation.”

This story accomplishes a couple of things. First, it’s a remarkable note on Joseph Biden Sr., to tell his 19-year-old son years before Stonewall, before Harvey Milk ran for office, and as James Baldwin’s words on race, sexual identity, and masculinity began to permeate the American consciousness, that two men should be afforded the simple dignity of openly loving each other. The story makes you wonder about those men and their lives, their audacity to kiss each other two