Joe Impedimenta
According to Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., President Reagan may not have held Judge Robert Bork in such high
esteem after all. At least not personally.
In his new autobiography-cum-presidential-campaign book, “Promises to Keep,” Biden recalls his successful fight to defeat Bork’s nomination to the Supreme Court in 1987. A few weeks after Bork went down, Biden met Reagan at the White House.
“Congratulations on Bork,” the Gipper told him.
“No, Mr. President,” the senator replied. “There’s no cause for congratulations. I feel bad for Judge Bork. He was a good man.”
“Ah, he wasn’t all that much,” Reagan replied to a stunned Biden. According to Biden, Reagan was angry that Bork complained about the White House’s inability to win his confirmation.
Other juicy nuggets:
- Biden notes that he began to “actively hate” the press only after granting one of his first feature interviews after entering the Senate in 1974 to future muckraking author Kitty Kelley, who was then with Washingtonian magazine. He claims Kelley misrepresented him and “cut up my interview to assure that I came across as callow and brash.”
- Writing about how other senators reached out to him after his first wife died tragically, Biden recalls Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., inviting him to the Senate gym. After Biden protested that he didn’t feel like working out,he paraphrases Kennedy’s assurances that “this wasn’t like a weight room. It was an old-guy gym, a place to get a massage or a steam bath.”
- Biden reveals that one of his high school nicknames was “Joe Impedimenta,” taken from a Latin word that means “the baggage that impedes one’s progress.” And a Biden campaign spokesperson points out that the nickname was spawned from a stuttering problem Biden has since overcome.
Update: 2:38pm
