Column: Folksy Delaware politics shaped Biden, plus memories of him here

The mob attack on the U.S. Capitol and Joe Biden’s inauguration brought back memories of a simpler time and a young senator. In my first real job, I was a nonpartisan, professional legislative assistant for Delaware conservative Republican Sen. William V. Roth Jr., now remembered for an IRA plan. In 1972, Roth’s senior counterpart lost his election to Biden, an upstart barely eligible to serve.

Roth was visibly shaken at his first post-election staff meeting. He had congratulated Biden and they met at “Return Day,” the unique, century-old Delaware festival where politicians, whether winners or losers, parade together and “bury the hatchet” (in reality a sharp axe) in sand in a show of unity once election season is over. Roth had also expressed heartfelt condolences for the tragic accident that killed Biden’s wife and daughter shortly after. But he was nervous about how to deal with this new, almost unknown colleague.

In fact, the transition was amazingly smooth. On state issues, staffs soon cooperated as were there no partisan divide. All knew the tiny Delaware delegation had to be united to be effective. At the personal level, despite differences of age, party and ideological inclinations, the senators quickly forged a warm relationship that lasted until Roth passed away in 2003. His family invited only one politician to speak at his memorial service: Biden. And Biden supposedly once said that the person he most trusted in politics was Roth. I could believe it.

Delaware is a ministate of three counties in the 1970s, with a half-million people and no television station. Campaigning involved billboards and meeting voters at factory gates, on streets and in malls. Constituents were used to seeing and conversing with their senators.

Neither was a native Delawarean, but both excelled at the folksy politics. Neither had a hint of arrogance. The gregarious Biden was a down-to-earth “lunch pail” Democrat, ambitious but affable. Naturally shy Roth hit factory gates with a huge St. Bernard, who, even we staff joked, was better looking and attracted more votes than the boss. Since Wilmington was just 90 minutes by train from Capitol Hill, both senators commuted, often together. And both repeatedly won elections by significant margins in the majority blue but business- oriented state. Biden once claimed his highly partisan mother crossed over for Roth.

When I left the Hill for a part-time fellowship at the East-West Center here, my first activity was to coordinate a conference on Pacific economic cooperation in February 1981. The center wanted congressional participation, but politicians feared the optics of winter trips to Hawaii.

I asked Roth, and he suggested Biden join. We were delighted. It was odd that the only senators were from the same East Coast state, but they no doubt calculated that by coming together they would blunt any partisan-based criticism.

Any senator needed a speaking role. Roth kept to script. Biden, whose natural style is more like Donald Trump’s than evident in the recent election, began an extemporaneous, disjointed ramble, heedless of time. I wondered how to hush him politely, and finally walked to the back of the room and drew a finger across my neck. Biden was not offended. He immediately said, “I’m being told to shut up,” and did. I guessed it happened often. I believe that thanks to joining that meeting, Biden is the first EWC conference alumnus to become U.S. president.

Congressional voting studies have shown that the 1970s was the least partisan period in U.S. history. I then thought that was the norm; it sadly is the exception. But it is the Senate that Biden knew in his formative years as a national politician and a key to his hope, sometimes thought naïve in this era, to rebuild bipartisan cooperation. Like tangoes, it will take two.

Another key to Biden’s aspirations is that he is the first modern president to rise politically in a very small, close-knit state. Due to COVID-19, Delaware’s Return Day was postponed in 2020 — but facing urgent crises, America should take a lesson from that small state tradition to bury the hatchet and work together again.

Charles E. Morrison is former president of the East-West Center, based next to the University of Hawaii-Manoa.