National Perspective — David Shribman — September 27, 2017

David Shribman

Joe Biden was 26 then, fresh out of law school with the Delaware bar exam behind him, and a Michel Legrand song began playing on the radio of his Corvette Stingray roadster. It was called "What Are You Doing the Rest of Your Life?" and even for a young man with a capacious ambition, he couldn't have imagined the course his life would take.

There were, as the 1969 song projected, tomorrows waiting deep in his eyes: summer (marriages to two remarkable women), winter (three tragic family deaths), spring (election to the Senate and, eventually, to the White House), and fall (the disastrous June debate that led to his withdrawal from the 2024 campaign). It is a lovely ballad, particularly appropriate for a country that has seen all the seasons and the times of Biden's days, especially for us journalists who, for a half-century, have seen his "face in every kind of light/In fields of gold and forests of the night."

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