The 1988 presidential campaign of Joe Biden, a Democratic U.S. Senator from Delaware, began in June 1987. At first, Biden was regarded as a strong candidate. In September 1987, however, reports emerged that he had plagiarized a speech by the British Leader of the Opposition and Labour Party Leader, Neil Kinnock. Allegations that Biden had engaged in plagiarism during law school and had exaggerated his academic record soon followed, and Biden withdrew from the race later that month.
Biden later served as the 47th vice president of the United States from 2009 to 2017 and as the 46th president of the United States from 2021 to 2025.
Background
Biden had dreams of running for president since his college days. He had been mentioned among possible contenders in the 1984 presidential election. He had considered the notion in 1983, urged on by pollster Pat Caddell, who thought there was space for a young candidate. A fiery speech he gave to several Democratic audiences had simultaneously scolded Democrats for outdated thinking and encouraged them regarding future directions, and had gained him some notice in the party. However, Biden did not enter the race that season. Nonetheless, he won one vote at the 1984 Democratic National Convention.
Biden was active on the party speaking circuit from 1985 on, and was considered one of the best orators among the potential presidential candidates for 1988. The declared absence of Senator Ted Kennedy from the field, to whom Biden was sometimes compared, was also encouraging to a possible Biden candidacy.
Biden received considerable attention in the summer of 1986 when he excoriated Secretary of State George Shultz at a Senate hearing because of the Reagan administration's stance towards South Africa and its system of apartheid.
Biden was initially considered one of the strongest Democratic presidential candidates as campaigning began in 1987. This was because of his image as a political moderate, his speaking ability on the stump (rated second only to that of Jesse Jackson), his appeal to Baby Boomers, his high-profile position as chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, looming for the Robert Bork confirmation hearings, and his fundraising appeal—his $1.7 million raised in the first quarter of 1987 was more than any other candidate. By the end of April he had raised $2 million, using not just contributions from Delaware but also establishing a base of support among young professionals and Jewish voters in a number of urban- and suburban-oriented states. He had no campaign debt, and Fortune magazine termed his "most impressive start" a "surprise".
When the campaign began, former Senator Gary Hart, who had made a strong nomination run four years earlier, was considered the clear front-runner. Indeed, The Wall Street Journal referred to the eight-person Democratic field as "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs". However, Hart then withdrew from the race in May 1987, following revelations of his friendship with Donna Rice.
Despite this, Biden did not see a rise in his poll numbers immediately after the Hart withdrawal, and was particularly stagnant in polls for the Iowa caucuses. Nevertheless, Biden had confidence that he could prevail; on the eve of his announcement, he said: "I'm going to win this thing. I really am. I just know it, I can feel it in my fingertips." Some political professionals saw Biden as believing that he could simply will himself to win the race, but his continued ability to raise campaign funds gave him credibility as a candidate. However, later reports suggest that up until his announcement, Biden was actually unsure whether he wanted to run at all, and it took the urging of his wife Jill Biden to convince him to go forward.
Campaign
Announcement
At the age of 44, Biden formally declared his candidacy for the Democratic nomination for president of the United States at the Wilmington train station on June 9, 1987.
In his June 9 speech, Biden said that Americans should rise above "the mere accumulation of material things". In language intended to recall John F. Kennedy, he said,
"For too long in this society, we have celebrated unrestrained individualism over common community. For too long as a nation, we have been lulled by the anthem of self-interest. For a decade, led by Ronald Reagan, self-aggrandizement has been the full-throated cry of this society: 'I've got mine so why don't you get yours' and 'What's in it for me?' ... We must rekindle the fire of idealism in our society, for nothing suffocates the promise of America more than unbounded cynicism and indifference."
Biden also laid out the platform he was running on, which included a middle stance between protectionism and free trade, opposition to the Reagan Strategic Defense Initiative, and support for child welfare, reduction of poverty, and the war against illegal drugs. Biden also emphasized the need for integrity in government.
Campaign staff and policy team
Biden's campaign manager was Tim Ridley (c.1955–2005), his press secretary was Larry Rasky (1951–2020), and his pollster and strategist was Pat Caddell (1950–2019). Biden's Senate chief-of-staff Ted Kaufman served as the campaign treasurer and principle fundraiser. John Marttila served as a political consultant and Thomas E. Donilon served as another strategist. Biden's sister Valerie Biden Owens also served a major role in running the campaign, as she had in all of his Senate campaigns, and was considered "first among equals" in making decisions. Future U.S. Senator Doug Jones, a longtime friend of Biden's, served as co-chair for the campaign.
Summer 1987
Once underway, Biden's campaign messaging became confused due to staff rivalries and bickering. Four different themes were presented, sometimes simultaneously: "Pepsi Generation", "Voice of optimism", "Save the children", and "Scold the voters". Pollster Pat Caddell in particular was a disruptive force within the campaign, but he had been Biden's friend for fifteen years. Another of the themes was generational change; Biden hoped to inspire a new generation, as John F. Kennedy had inspired his. Indeed, Biden had a theory of presidential elections as a cycle, wherein there are candidates, such as he saw himself, who can bring with them large spurts of sometimes disruptive progress, followed by periods of adjustment in which voters prefer candidates who can "let America catch its breath."
However, the generational change theme was not catching on especially well. Biden was also hurt by his never having been a player in the Washington social scene. He would later write that his messaging had been "a bit opaque, like audiences were hearing me through a veil. ... I started looking at the race through the wrong prism. I looked around, judg[ing] myself against the other potential candidates for the nomination ..."
He received somewhat mixed notices for his performance in the first of the Democratic presidential primary debates, which was held at the Wortham Theater Center in Houston, Texas on July 1, 1987, during a special production of William F. Buckley's Firing Line program. Biden received audience applause for his energy policy in favor of domestic oil production, for his objections to what he called unfair trade practices of foreign countries, and for his criticisms of the Reagan administration's policies in Central America.
Biden was also suffering from having to divide his attention between the campaign, Senate responsibilities (including handling the Bork nomination), and family duties, but he campaigned intensively nonetheless. A profile at the time in the Dallas Morning News assessed him thusly: "He brings to the campaign an ingratiating manner and a quick wit with considerable Irish charm plus an ability to rouse audiences that few Democrats can match. But he also brings a reputation as a showboater and a hothead with a penchant for windiness." Such was his propensity to keep talking at campaign appearances that staffers gave reporters a note saying that "Senator may stray from prepared remarks". Then, as throughout his career, Biden was, as the New York Times later profiled, "a 'gut politician,' ... swaggering, ad-libbing, liable to get carried away in front of a crowd."
By August 1987, Biden's campaign had begun to lag behind those of Michael Dukakis and Richard Gephardt, although he had still raised more funds than all candidates but Dukakis, and was seeing an upturn in Iowa polls.
Kinnock controversy
Major controversy beset Biden's candidacy, beginning on September 12, 1987, with high-profile articles in The New York Times and The Des Moines Register. Biden was accused of plagiarizing a speech by Neil Kinnock, leader of the British Labour Party. Kinnock's speech, delivered to a Welsh Labour Party conference on May 15, 1987, and then rebroadcast during the UK 1987 general election, made reference to his background and that of his wife Glenys. It included the lines:
Why am I the first Kinnock in a thousand generations to be able to get to university? [Pointing to his wife in the audience:] Why is Glenys the first woman in her family in a thousand generations to be able to get to university? Was it because all our predecessors were thick?
Biden's speech made reference to himself and his wife Jill, and included the lines:
I started thinking as I was coming over here, why is it that Joe Biden is the first in his family ever to go to a university? [Pointing to his wife in the audience:] Why is it that my wife who is sitting out there in the audience is the first in her family to ever go to college? Is it because our fathers and mothers were not bright? Is it because I'm the first Biden in a thousand generations to get a college and a graduate degree that I was smarter than the rest?
Biden went on to duplicate other parts of Kinnock's speech, such as their forebears' ability to read and write poetry, their strength in working for hours underground in a mine only to come up and play football afterward, and their being limited by lack of a "platform" upon which to stand.
Biden had in fact cited Kinnock as the source for the formulation on previous occasions. However, he made no reference to the original source at the August 23 Democratic debate at the Iowa State Fair being reported on, nor in an August 26 interview for the National Education Association. Moreover, while political speeches often appropriate ideas and language from each other, Biden's use came under more scrutiny because he fabricated aspects of his own family's background in order to match Kinnock's.
Following the Kinnock attention, reports came from the San Jose Mercury News of Biden giving a February 3, 1987, speech to the California Democratic Party that reused without credit passages from a 1967 speech by Robert F. Kennedy, and of Biden giving 1985 and 1986 speeches that did the same with a passage from a 1976 speech by Hubert H. Humphrey. In the Kennedy case – which got the greater attention, since there was film footage of both versions that television news programs could play side-by-side – Pat Caddell stated that the reuse without credit was his own fault, and that he had never informed Biden of the source of the material. It was also reported that the California speech had taken a short phrase from the 1961 inaugural address of John F. Kennedy.
After Biden withdrew from the race, it came to light that he had indeed correctly credited Kinnock on other occasions. However, in the Iowa speech that was recorded and distributed to reporters (with a parallel video of Kinnock) by aides to Michael Dukakis, the eventual nominee, he failed to do so. Dukakis, who disowned any knowledge of the Kinnock video, fired John Sasso, his campaign manager and long-time Chief of Staff, but Biden's campaign could not recover.