The McCains

[telcoman]

From the New York Times

August 23, 2008For McCains, a Public Path but Private Wealth By DAVID M. HALBFINGERPHOENIX — When Senator John McCain is in Washington, he lives in a luxury high-rise condominium in Arlington, Va., owned by his wife, Cindy Hensley McCain. Mrs. McCain also owns their condos in Phoenix, San Diego and Coronado, Calif., and their vacation compound near Sedona, Ariz. And it is the beer business, Hensley & Company, she inherited from her father that is the source of the McCain family fortune.

That fortune makes Mr. McCain one of the richest members of the Senate. Yet barely a sliver of it is in his name.

Democrats have increasingly highlighted Mr. McCain’s wealth. Senator Barack Obama ridiculed him on Thursday for being unable to say how many homes he owned, saying it showed that Mr. McCain was out of touch with ordinary Americans. But with the McCains’ money in Cindy McCain’s name, as dictated by a prenuptial agreement, the senator’s finances are more difficult to assess and scrutinize than those of many other political candidates.

The husbands and wives of senators are subject to fewer disclosure requirements than their office-holding spouses. In addition, Mrs. McCain, who files separate tax returns from her husband, controls a privately held company and invests mainly through a web of limited-liability corporations and trusts that have few disclosure requirements. She declined to be interviewed.

“Cindy is a private person, and I think in many ways that defines her,” said Robert Delgado, her father’s successor as chief executive of Hensley & Company, who spoke at the McCain campaign’s behest.

But the Hensley family wealth, from its rough-and-tumble origins to prominence in Arizona’s corporate world, is also the fortune that propelled John McCain into national politics. A clearer picture of that fortune emerges from a review of public records and interviews with employees, business associates, friends and relatives.

Hensley & Company has grown from a tiny operation in the 1950s to the dominant beer wholesaler in Arizona and the third-largest Budweiser distributor in the country, with more than $300 million in annual sales. It plays a leading role in corporate Phoenix — Andy McCain, the senator’s stepson from his first marriage and a top executive of the beer company, is now president of the city’s Chamber of Commerce — and is a forceful presence in state politics on the issues that matter to it.

But by all accounts, Mrs. McCain is far from a forceful presence at the company, where she is chairwoman.

She crisscrosses the country on the company jet, keeps an accountant on the company payroll to mind her personal finances, drives a company Lexus with “MS BUD” plates and says she oversees the company’s “strategic planning and corporate vision.” Yet she almost never shows up in the office, is deemed an absentee owner by Anheuser-Busch and has left scarcely a mark on the company, present and former executives say.

Mrs. McCain has spent far more time as a volunteer on behalf of needy children. She is a board member of CARE and Operation Smile, which provides cleft-palate surgery for impoverished children; when she visited Mother Teresa’s orphanage in Bangladesh 17 years ago, she brought a baby girl back for the surgery and then adopted her.

Her business, however, recently found itself at odds with advocates for pediatric hospital beds in Arizona’s neediest communities and for a statewide childhood education program. When the advocates proposed initiatives that would raise liquor taxes, Hensley opposed them.

Mrs. McCain has not said how she would handle her business if her husband were elected president. The federal government has domain over issues important to the alcohol industry, like excise taxes, marketing to under-age drinkers and beverage labeling.

Anheuser-Busch documents suggest that Mrs. McCain’s ownership of Hensley & Company could also create an unusual circumstance. The brewer’s contracts with wholesalers require that absentee owners supervise their managers, attend meetings and make timely decisions, meaning that the business would be overseen by the first lady. And if she chose to withdraw from ownership, Anheuser-Busch would have the right to approve whoever bought her shares, or to make an offer to buy them.

A Colorful Inheritance

He was a young husband and father before he went off to war. Wounded in combat, he returned home a hero, but stunned his wife by divorcing her to marry another woman. The warrior in this case was not Cindy McCain’s husband, but her father, James W. Hensley.

Jim Hensley’s first marriage was to his Phoenix high school sweetheart, Mary Jeanne Parks. Family lore says he was treading water in the English Channel, after his B-17 was shot down, when his daughter, Kathleen Anne Hensley, was born in February 1943.

The marriage ended there, according to that daughter, now Kathleen Portalski. Recuperating far from home, he fell in love with Marguerite Smith, a woman from Tennessee with a 10-year-old daughter. By March 1945, he was divorced, and they married.

Back in Phoenix, he and his brother, Eugene, went into the liquor business with Kemper Marley, a businessman who had cornered much of the market in Arizona after Prohibition ended.

In March 1948, a federal jury convicted both Hensleys of concealing sales of black-market liquor. Jim Hensley’s six month sentence was suspended. A second indictment, in 1953 for falsifying records to evade taxes, was dismissed.

The Hensleys bought a New Mexico horse track in 1952. Eugene Hensley’s role at the track led to lawsuits, tax-evasion charges and prison. In 1969, he sold out to a mob-connected company with close ties to Mr. Marley, according to published reports. (The Phoenix police named Mr. Marley as the man they believed ordered the 1976 assassination of Don Bolles, an investigative reporter for The Arizona Republic. Mr. Marley, who died in 1990, was never charged.)

Jim Hensley sold his stake in the track in 1955, and took a job at a beer wholesaler. After buying the business, in 1959 he got a federal wholesaler’s permit as Hensley & Company.

Selling Bud in steel cans and Michelob draft, Hensley & Company started with a 6 percent market share. But Mr. Hensley, bent on building the “Cadillac of beer companies,” lured workers with generous pay and benefits.

Few big cities have only one Budweiser wholesaler, but Phoenix had just 107,000 residents in 1950. A decade later, its population had quadrupled. Hensley’s market share shot to 50 percent in 1987, from 20 percent in 1970; it now has nearly two-thirds of the market.

Those who knew Mr. Hensley, who died at 80 in June 2000, invariably sing his praises. If he had one flaw, they add, it was being unable to say no to his wife or their daughter, Cindy Lou, who was born in 1954.

At her father’s funeral, Cindy McCain told of his gentle reaction when she wrecked the car he had bought her after she graduated from the University of Southern California, according to people who were there. She did not mention, as a former employee recalled, that it was a Porsche and that he replaced it with a Mercedes-Benz. When the young Cindy Hensley began teaching high school and was criticized for driving a fancy car, the ex-employee said, her father bought her a Volkswagen to drive to school.

Mr. Hensley also quietly subsidized his first daughter, Mrs. Portalski, and her family. He paid for her children’s schooling, gave them credit cards and wrote company checks of $40,000 a year to Mrs. Portalski and her husband, the couple said in an interview.

But in his will, Mr. Hensley left Mrs. Portalski just $10,000 and her offspring nothing. “It’s so disappointing, just being pushed aside,” she said. Mrs. Portalski said Mrs. McCain added insult to that injury by referring to herself, in her eulogy for her father, as his only child — while her half-sister sat in a front pew.

Shortly after Jim Hensley’s death, Mrs. Portalski’s daughter said, she tried charging a meal and had her company credit card rejected. Her son says he learned that Mr. Hensley’s promise to pay his graduate-school tuition was no longer operative.

A McCain campaign spokeswoman, Jill Hazelbaker, said Mr. Hensley’s will did not provide for continuing his periodic gifts to relatives.

Absent, and Entitled

Her father’s death left Mrs. McCain with full control over his company, though she has seldom intervened, executives say. “She’s never been a day-to-day manager in this business,” said Mr. Delgado, the chief executive.

In the late 1980s, she set up a charitable organization out of Hensley headquarters, distributing medical supplies in developing countries. But she disbanded the group in the early 1990s after she became addicted to painkillers and was caught stealing from its supply of drugs.

Since then, her parking space has seldom been occupied. In fact, Anheuser-Busch treats her as an absentee owner, requiring Mr. Delgado to have total control over business operations and capital investments.

Mr. Delgado confirmed that after Jim Hensley died, Anheuser-Busch approached Mrs. McCain about buying the distributorship, because the brewer prefers hands-on owners. But he said Mrs. McCain decided she wanted to be the steward of her father’s legacy.

But others who have seen the company’s books gave another reason: The company is handsomely profitable. She owns a controlling 34 percent share of a company with net profits estimated at more than $5 million a year.

In addition, Meghan, Jack and James, the biological children of Mr. and Mrs. McCain, each have 7.73 percent of Hensley & Company. Andy McCain, 45, the senator’s stepson, has 6.8 percent. Bridget McCain, the McCain’s adopted daughter, has shares worth 3.4 percent. (Ms. Hazelbaker of the McCain campaign said Bridget’s stake would eventually equal her siblings’.)

Mr. Delgado declined to discuss equity stakes or distribution of profits and said Mrs. McCain spoke to him a few times a week, often about personal financial issues. He said she took an interest in Hensley’s charitable giving and in “things that could affect the company’s existence.” For example, when he proposed taking on debt to build a large warehouse in Tempe, he said Mrs. McCain’s input was “advice and consent.” He praised her for otherwise letting management run the business.

Another person knowledgeable about the company’s finances said Mrs. McCain’s involvement in Hensley was more limited. “Delgado will tell her how much money they made, so she can tell him how much she’ll take out,” this person said. As controlling owner, Mrs. McCain is entitled to distribute profits to shareholders whenever she sees fit.

How much she receives in profits is not a matter of public record. Distributions to other shareholders, who discussed them only anonymously, suggest she receives hundreds of thousands of dollars several times a year. Mrs. McCain has released only a two-page Form 1040 from her 2006 return. It listed $4.5 million in income from S corporations (like Hensley), partnerships, rental real estate and other categories; capital gains of $743,000, and dividends of $283,000. Mr. McCain’s tax returns show that his wife received a salary from Hensley of more than $430,000 each of the last two years. (Mr. McCain listed $361,373 of his own income in 2007.)

Senate rules do not require spouses to specify the values of assets or income sources exceeding $1 million, and Mrs. McCain has many of them, including shares in Anheuser-Busch, which at a minimum are worth $2.7 million.

Mrs. McCain has also invested in banks, including one founded by Valley National Bank, where her father got his first business loan. Valley National, now part of JPMorgan Chase, holds a promissory note of $500,000 to $1 million that Mrs. McCain has been rolling over annually since 2003. And Hensley’s entire debt of $30 million is held by JPMorgan Chase, Mr. Delgado said.

Far more of Mrs. McCain’s money is invested in real estate. With Sharon Harper, a close friend, Mrs. McCain has stakes in three office complexes. At the Brophy College Preparatory School, where the McCains’ two sons went to high school, the Harper Balcony sits just over the McCain Colonnade.

Mrs. McCain owns 10 homes, including rental properties.

There are the condominium in the Crystal City section of Arlington; two in an oceanfront tower in Coronado; her father’s condo in the La Jolla section of San Diego; a $4.7 million condo atop one of Phoenix’s newest luxury towers; another unit on its fourth floor; and a $700,000 townhouse nearby.

Then there are Mrs. McCain’s vacation homes outside Sedona. In 1985, a Hensley entity bought the first, along Oak Creek. In 1996, Mrs. McCain bought an adjacent home for $750,000.

In 1992, the McCains and the Harpers formed a partnership to buy six acres of vacant land across the creek, and in 2000 they bought another neighbor’s spread. The Audubon Society turned the vacant land into a private bird sanctuary with help from the McCains.

While all of the family’s real estate is held by Mrs. McCain, the John and Cindy McCain Family Foundation is funded by Mr. McCain. From 2001 to 2006, its donations averaged about $260,000 a year. In addition to big donations to children’s causes, mine clearing and Parkinson’s research, the United States Naval Academy received $420,000 to run an ethics conference in the senator’s name; the Brophy school has received more than $250,000; Christ Lutheran, which Bridget and Jim attended, more than $100,000.

Protecting Interests at Home

The booming Hensley business financed John McCain’s entry into politics: after marrying Cindy, he retired from the Navy in 1981 and planned a run for Congress the next year. To that end, he took a public-relations job at Hensley and set about introducing himself to voters. His father-in-law’s wealth — Mrs. McCain was given $639,000 by a Hensley affiliate in 1982 — also enabled Mr. McCain to lend his campaign $167,000.

Today, Hensley & Company is a major donor to Arizona politicians, and has fought increases in the state excise tax, now about 1.5 cents a beer. The tax has risen only three times since the repeal of Prohibition, last in 1984, and remains 16 percent below the national median.

Its contributions have occasionally drawn bad publicity. In 1991, an Anheuser-Busch lobbyist accused Jim Hensley of passing him cash to give to lawmakers. But the lobbyist recanted, and no charges were filed. Hensley workers also told a local columnist in 1989 that they had been pressured to donate to specific political committees and to canvass for Mr. McCain’s first Congressional race in 1982. The company denied it. But workers say Doug Yonko, an executive and nephew of Jim Hensley, still buttonholes colleagues for donations. Mr. Yonko said all gifts were voluntary.

At the national level, the company’s priorities, fought for by the National Beer Wholesalers’ Association, include rolling back the national excise tax of about 5 cents a beer, last raised in 1991, and fighting efforts by hard-liquor distillers to require labels showing the amount of alcohol in a standard serving. The beer lobby also successfully opposed a bill to pay for television advertisements combating under-age drinking.

Still, industry critics acknowledge that Mr. McCain has consistently recused himself from alcohol-specific issues. Yet he has received more contributions from the industry than nearly any other senator.

The reason, beer executives say, is that Mr. McCain is sympathetic to business owners and shares their views on taxes and other economic issues.

But George A. Hacker, director of the Alcohol Policies Project at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a group that is a frequent opponent of the alcohol lobby, said the industry would benefit if a McCain administration steered clear of alcohol policy to avoid conflicts of interest. Inaction, Mr. Hacker said, is almost always better than action in the industry’s view.

Nothing better sums up the low-key but formidable political power of Hensley & Company than its response to two recent ballot initiatives.

Nadine Mathis Basha, the wife of a supermarket mogul, envisioned an early-childhood education program for toddlers statewide. To pay for it, Ms. Basha said, she approached Hensley in 2006 with a proposal to raise taxes on alcohol and tobacco. Mr. Delgado told her that while he supported such a program, a beer tax would “open the floodgates” nationwide and he would fight it, Ms. Basha recalled. Daunted, she went ahead with a tobacco-only tax increase, and her initiative passed.

This year, Phoenix Children’s Hospital proposed an initiative to raise money for pediatric hospital beds. Polling showed a liquor-tax increase would be an easy sell, but the hospital still offered a 30-year moratorium on any further liquor-tax increases. But Mr. Delgado said he learned that the moratorium was not ironclad and vowed to fight. The hospitals, lacking money for a costly advertisement campaign, folded, according to people involved.

But Hensley & Company is taking no chances. It is supporting another initiative that would require that any ballot measure imposing a tax increase be approved by a majority of all registered voters in the state, not just of those who turn out at the polls.

I don't think very much of Cindy McCain and her father was a scumbag in my opinion

Mr. Hensley also quietly subsidized his first daughter, Mrs. Portalski, and her family. He paid for her children’s schooling, gave them credit cards and wrote company checks of $40,000 a year to Mrs. Portalski and her husband, the couple said in an interview.

But in his will, Mr. Hensley left Mrs. Portalski just $10,000 and her offspring nothing. “It’s so disappointing, just being pushed aside,” she said. Mrs. Portalski said Mrs. McCain added insult to that injury by referring to herself, in her eulogy for her father, as his only child — while her half-sister sat in a front pew.

The McCains are not the type of people America needs in the White House.

Telcoman

[rn79870]

As I watched Barack and Joe, with their wives, Michelle and Jill on the podium at the Springfield rally, I was impressed with how full of life and promise they were. The two women are the epitome of class and composure. The two candidates, Barack and Joe are a breath of fresh air.

I'm aware of all the negative items in Cindy McCain's background and how those items may well haunt the US in the future.

[telcoman]

As I watched Barack and Joe, with their wives, Michelle and Jill on the podium at the Springfield rally, I was impressed with how full of life and promise they were. The two women are the epitome of class and composure. The two candidates, Barack and Joe are a breath of fresh air.

I'm aware of all the negative items in Cindy McCain's background and how those items may well haunt the US in the future.

I really thought Hillary was going to be Obama's surprise but I was impressed with both Obama and Bidens speeches today.

Telcoman

[Eikon]

Telco!!!!

I'm stunned.

This is the first post you've made that links outside information that is not directly written with the intent to slander McCain or the Republicans.

This is actually unbiased factual information. A statement of how things are without a slant or intent behind it.

It was a good read. It was very informative.

I don't even mind the personal opinion you gave at the conclusion. I don't agree with that opinion, but I respect it because the entire post wasn't aimed simply at slandering.

Keep it up the good work!!!

[rn79870]

I really feel this puts us over the top. A good VP choice is worth 5 oints in the polls.

[Eikon]

I really feel this puts us over the top. A good VP choice is worth 5 oints in the polls.

Unless the VP candidate has a history of saying bad things about the Pres candidate.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpjAs4vtc1w

[telcoman]

Telco!!!!

I'm stunned.

This is the first post you've made that links outside information that is not directly written with the intent to slander McCain or the Republicans.

This is actually unbiased factual information. A statement of how things are without a slant or intent behind it.

It was a good read. It was very informative.

I don't even mind the personal opinion you gave at the conclusion. I don't agree with that opinion, but I respect it because the entire post wasn't aimed simply at slandering.

Keep it up the good work!!!

LOL

I'm happy you approved my message

Not bad for an old liberal farht from the great state of New Jersey

Telcoman

[rn79870]

Unless the VP candidate has a history of saying bad things about the Pres candidate.

We expect McCain to jump on that. However the fact is that Biden fills in the missing pieces, the very pieces he commented on when he was a presidential candidate. It's a great team and nothing changes that.

[themadscientist]

I think Biden has a better body of work that his position on the ticket would suggest. Count on the dems to cast aside experience for a cult of personality.

[rn79870]

I've spent an hour searching blogs for any potential negative comments on Biden. There are no zipper rumors or restroom adventures in his past and he's pretty clean as far as the blogs go. There is some concern about his position on the last bankruptcy bill, but that's minor.

There is enough low hanging fruits to keep Rush Limbaugh in radio skits for months, so we won't have to put up with that trash.

[telcoman]

I've spent an hour searching blogs for any potential negative comments on Biden. There are no zipper rumors or restroom adventures in his past and he's pretty clean as far as the blogs go. There is some concern about his position on the last bankruptcy bill, but that's minor.

There is enough low hanging fruits to keep Rush Limbaugh in radio skits for months, so we won't have to put up with that trash.

Bob

Joe Biden appears to be an excellent choice.

Isn't Rush now on the who gives a s#it channel?

From The New York Times

August 24, 2008Man in the News | Joseph R. Biden Jr.A Senate Stalwart Who Bounced Back By PATRICK HEALY and MICHAEL LUOSeptember 1987 was a month of ruin and renewal for Joe Biden.

Then a three-term senator from Delaware, Mr. Biden saw his bid for the Democratic nomination for president in tatters after he had been caught cribbing from other politicians’ speeches. He exited the race amid a chorus of Washington chatter that the presidency would never be his.

Yet just as his candidacy was ending, Mr. Biden, as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, was leading the Democrats in a successful battle against Robert H. Bork, President Ronald Reagan’s nominee to the Supreme Court. And soon after, Mr. Biden underwent surgery on two brain aneurysms. Had he continued running for president, friends say, the rigors might have exacerbated his health problems and even killed him.

The tumult of that period transformed Mr. Biden: He settled down into a role as a statesman of the Senate, becoming a serious student of policy and government. As the Democrats’ point man on crime and as a champion of the Violence Against Women Act, among other bills, Mr. Biden became a close ally of labor unions, civil rights leaders and women’s groups. While he drew ire from some feminists over the treatment of Anita Hill during the Clarence Thomas hearings, in 1991, he was also the only member of the Judiciary Committee to emerge with favorable marks from a majority of Americans, according to a Gallup poll.

He has become widely recognized as a respected voice on foreign policy, the two Iraq wars (against the first, for the second), the Balkans conflict, global AIDS prevention and a wealth of national security issues. From his perch as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations committee, he has aggressively criticized President Bush for his unilateralist approach to the world.

It was this expertise in foreign policy that helped raise Mr. Biden’s standing with Mr. Obama, who announced in text and e-mail messages early Saturday that Joseph Robinette Biden Jr., 65, was his choice to be the next vice president of the United States. An Irish Catholic son of Scranton, Pa., the sort of white, working-class city that Mr. Obama is fighting to win this November, Mr. Biden is in some ways a political elder brother to the 47-year-old Mr. Obama: competitive and protective, far more experienced in government and politics, and already a veteran orator when Mr. Obama was still finding his voice.

The two became colleagues upon Mr. Obama’s entry to the Senate in 2005 and his appointment to the Foreign Relations Committee. Mr. Obama was perhaps best known at the time for opposing military action in Iraq. Mr. Biden, who had opposed the Persian Gulf war in 1991, worked in 2002 with the committee’s ranking Republican member, Senator Richard G. Lugar of Indiana, on a resolution that would authorize action to remove weapons of mass destruction in Iraq — but not to remove President Saddam Hussein. The White House opposed the idea, which foundered; Mr. Biden ultimately voted for the war resolution that Mr. Obama opposed.

Since then, Mr. Biden has been a critic of the Bush administration’s strategy in Iraq and a leading advocate of partitioning that nation into three semiautonomous regions, for Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds — modeled somewhat on the division of Bosnia in the 1990s, an effort he was involved in. This so-called Biden Plan — often referred to that way by Mr. Biden himself — has been somewhat praised by Mr. Obama and other leading Democrats.

Mr. Biden achieved a major legislative victory last month when Mr. Bush signed a measure co-written by Mr. Biden to increase spending significantly over the next five years to treat and prevent AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis overseas.

A Provocateur

If Al Gore was a generational peer to Bill Clinton, and d!ck Cheney was a guiding force to George W. Bush, Mr. Biden has at times acted as blunt-speaking provocateur to Mr. Obama, challenging the younger politician’s ideas and assumptions in ways that Mr. Obama said he wants from his running mate.

A man of strong and many opinions, with a puckish humor and an inability to say no to Sunday news programs, Mr. Biden also has been satirized as the personification of senatorial windiness, though in the presidential debates of this past year he showed new discipline for keeping his comments succinct.

Still, he has sometimes lapsed into gaffes. In announcing his second bid for the presidency, in January 2007, Mr. Biden referred to his fellow candidate, Mr. Obama, as “the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy.”

In a debate in December 2007, Mr. Biden had to defend himself upon being asked if he was “uncomfortable talking about race,” and won a vote of confidence afterward from Mr. Obama himself.

“I’ve worked with Joe Biden, I’ve seen his leadership,” Mr. Obama said. “I have absolutely no doubt about what is in his heart and the commitment that he has made with respect to racial equality in this country. Joe is on the right side of the issues and is fighting every day for a better America.”

Mr. Biden also said at another point in 2007 that Mr. Obama was “not yet ready” for the presidency, a point that Mr. Biden was questioned about in an August 2007 debate of the Democratic candidates.

“Look, I think he’s a wonderful guy, to start off with, number one,” Mr. Biden replied, before explaining his concern that Mr. Obama and other candidates were wrong (and he was right) on steps to recast American policy toward Pakistan. (Mr. Obama said he did not see much difference in their approaches to Pakistan.)

Compared with other relationships he has built in Washington, where he is serving his sixth term in the Senate, Mr. Biden has little history with Mr. Obama. In Mr. Biden’s 2007 autobiography he mentions Mr. Obama only once, and in the prologue section. “I served with the last of the Southern segregationists,” Mr. Biden writes of his long Senate career, “but I was there to see Carol Moseley Braun and Barack Obama sworn in.”

The child of a car salesman and a graduate of the University of Delaware and Syracuse Law School, Mr. Biden had settled in the Wilmington, Del., suburbs to practice law and serve as a local councilman when he decided in 1971 to challenge a popular incumbent senator, J. Caleb Boggs. Only 29 years old, Mr. Biden won in a tight race; he turned 30 in time to meet the legal age requirement to serve in the chamber.

A month later, driving in search of a Christmas tree, Mr. Biden’s wife, Neilia, and their three young children were struck by another car. Neilia and their 13-month-old daughter, Naomi, were killed; his two sons were hospitalized but recovered. Mr. Biden considered resigning but was persuaded to start his Senate term. Five years later he courted and wed a teacher, Jill Jacobs, whose photograph he had noticed in an advertisement for local parks; they have a daughter, Ashley.

In 1988, Mr. Biden underwent surgery to repair two so-called berry aneurysms in arteries in opposite sides of his brain. The first of the aneurysms — a ballooning of an artery — tore without warning, leaking blood to cause neck pain and nausea. Mr. Biden wore a brace until the correct diagnosis was made. He escaped without suffering a paralyzing stroke. The second aneurysm apparently caused no symptoms and was repaired a few weeks after the first. Mr. Biden returned to the Senate after a seven-month absence.

A Family Man

As he has grown in prominence, Mr. Biden has commuted for years between Washington and Wilmington, so he is home every night. He is close to his family. His sister, Valerie Biden Owens, has played an important role in all of his campaigns and managed his presidential bid last year. And he is known as a doting grandfather, often sitting on the floor to play with his grandchildren. Mr. Biden has long been ranked as one of the least wealthy members of the Senate.

He largely built his power base and expertise as the chairman or ranking Democrat of two powerful Senate committees: Judiciary, which he led from 1987 to 1995, and Foreign Relations, from 2001 to 2003 and since 2007. On Judiciary he became a leading advocate for the Violence Against Women Act, tougher drug sentencing laws and money for local law enforcement programs.

Leading the hearings on Clarence Thomas’s nomination in 1991, Mr. Biden came under fire from women’s groups and women in Congress who said that he initially gave short shrift to allegations of sexual harassment against the nominee by Anita Hill.

But he noted that Ms. Hill had at first not wanted her identity disclosed even to Mr. Thomas, making an investigation difficult. Polls after the nomination fight showed that Mr. Biden, who ultimately voted against Mr. Thomas, was credited by the public with presiding fairly over the contentious hearings and he appeared to suffer little lasting political damage.

More recently, Mr. Biden voted against Mr. Bush’s nominations of John G. Roberts Jr. and Samuel A. Alito Jr. to the Supreme Court.

During and since his time leading the Judiciary Committee, Mr. Biden has been derided by some critics as the “Senator from MBNA,” or “(D-MBNA),” because of his close ties to the credit card behemoth that was based in Wilmington, Del., until it was bought three years ago by Bank of America.

Employees of MBNA Corporation had heavily contributed to Mr. Biden, pouring more than $214,000 into his campaign coffers going back to 1989, making the company his single biggest supporter, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

Moreover, in 2003, after Mr. Biden’s son Hunter had graduated from law school, MBNA hired him as a management trainee and quickly promoted him to executive vice president. After Hunter Biden left the firm to become a partner at a Washington lobbying firm, the company paid him a $100,000 annual retainer to advise it on the Internet and privacy issues. Mr. Biden also paid Hunter’s law firm $143,000 for “legal services,” including nearly $60,000 in outstanding bills just last month.

In another MBNA connection that has raised questions, Mr. Biden sold his Delaware house for $1.2 million in the mid-1990s to John Cochran, a senior executive of the company who would become its chairman and chief executive.

Campaign consultants for Raymond J. Clatworthy, a Delaware businessman who ran twice against Mr. Biden, tried to make an issue of the sale in their race in 1996, suggesting a sweetheart deal, but Mr. Biden produced an appraisal of his home that matched the purchase price.

Corporate Leaning

Mr. Biden became an early supporter of a controversial bankruptcy law that was championed by the company and other credit card issuers and finally passed in 2005, making it more difficult for consumers to erase their debts. Mr. Obama, who voted against the measure, recently skewered the presumptive Republican nominee, Senator John McCain, for backing the bill, saying it allowed “banks and credit card companies to tilt the playing field in their favor, at the expense of hard-working Americans.”

A report last year by Credit Suisse, the investment bank, concluded the law had had a “profound impact” on the country’s subprime mortgage crisis, leading directly to a rise in foreclosures.

Mr. Obama has made the bankruptcy bill an issue on the campaign trail, announcing a plan in July to revise the law and give more protection to debtors. He has argued that his opposition to the legislation demonstrated his support for working families, while casting Mr. McCain, who voted for the measure, as being in the pocket of credit card and banking industry lobbyists.

Accompanying Mr. Biden’s respected legislative record is a personal touch that is renowned for verbal gaffes, usually a product of impolitic directness. None was more devastating than the plagiarism incident that eventually forced him to exit the presidential race in 1988.

During a speech at the Iowa State Fair, Mr. Biden delivered a moving closing monologue about his family’s humble roots. It turned out that he had borrowed the passage from a British politician, Neil Kinnock, who had been describing his own personal history. Mr. Biden previously attributed the words to him on the stump but for some reason did not this time.

Other revelations quickly emerged: Mr. Biden had plagiarized parts of a paper he wrote in law school, using word for word five pages from a law review article without attribution; in a breezy moment with a voter in New Hampshire he had dramatically embellished his college and law school accomplishments; he had adopted parts of speeches by Robert F. Kennedy without citation.

By 2007, when he decided to try for the White House again, the political agonies of the ’80s had been forgotten by many Americans. And Mr. Biden himself pledged to be more careful if he won in 2008.

Memorably, at one of the Democratic candidate debates, he was asked whether he could reassure voters that he would have the discipline to watch his words and language if elected. “Yes,” Mr. Biden said, and nothing more, smiling as the audience laughed with approval.

Reporting and research were contributed by Carl Hulse, Christopher Drew, Lawrence K. Altman and Kitty Bennett.

Telcoman

[rn79870]

Isn't it ironic how McCain's camp was circulating speeches of Biden's from his previous campaign while John was busy praising Biden as a great choice.

(CNN) — John McCain’s campaign may have used Joe Biden in a negative spot just hours after Barack Obama named the Delaware senator his running mate, but the presumptive Republican nominee had nothing but good things to say in a new interview.

"I think he's a good selection," McCain told CBS’s Katie Couric. "Joe and I have been friends for many, many years, and we know each other very well, and so I think [Obama’s] made a very wise selection.

“I know that Joe will campaign well for Senator Obama, and so I think he's going to be very formidable. Obviously, Joe and I have been on different philosophical sides, but we have been — I consider him a good friend and a good man."

[AZhitman]

Interesting how that alone can be turned against him by the libbies...

Looks like he's being gracious and mature to me.

[srellim234]

I think it's more a disconnect between the Republican campaign and the Republican candidate. Like many other discrepancies in campaigns, the candidate says one thing. Behind the scenes (or publicly, in the case of the recent "the candidate doesn't speak for the campaign" gaffe) the political party, talking heads, workers, etc. continually push forward with their agenda and platform, hoping they won't have to show any compromise with even their own candidate. Even if he's being practical.

[Cold_Zero]

Joe Biden seems to have respect in the Republican community. Bill Bennett this morning went on about how well Joe treated him during congressional hearings.

What will be Biden's Achilles heal is his arrogance and him speaking before thinking through what he is going to say.

Word on the street is that Michelle Obama was pissed that Obama was made to take Biden by his Campaign. Obviously to secure the democratic vote in Pennsylvania, since Gore won Penn by 4 points in 2000 and Kerry won Penn by 2 points in 2004 and probably to secure votes in West Virginia and Ohio. The Obama will need Pennsylvania in order to win the Electoral College. We will see..

[Cold_Zero]

I think it's more a disconnect between the Republican campaign and the Republican candidate. Like many other discrepancies in campaigns, the candidate says one thing. Behind the scenes (or publicly, in the case of the recent "the candidate doesn't speak for the campaign" gaffe) the political party, talking heads, workers, etc. continually push forward with their agenda and platform, hoping they won't have to show any compromise with even their own candidate. Even if he's being practical.

How can the candidate not speak for the campaign? For all instensive purposes the candidate is the campaign. I think John McCain not towing the party line looks good in his favor, since he has/is being painted as a maverick/independent. I think what will work against McCain is all the attack groups that will come out of the wood work to attack the Obama/Biden campaign.bud

[AZhitman]

For all instensive purposes the candidate is the campaign.

Sorry Bud, gotta do it:

It's "intents and purposes".

Just making sure you're not turning into a lazy liberal on me.

[rn79870]

Just making sure you're becomming another intelligent liberal on me.

No prob bro., fixed yur typo.

[srellim234]

The candidate isn't necessarily the campaign, only a visible part of one. You only need to look at the current administration to see it. Bush freely admits he doesn't read anything about current events. He surrounds himself with "yes" men. His advisors are able to manipulate and control what happens because of it. The people beneath him, starting with Cheney, know they can push through their agenda at a lower level than President and control things from there. The candidate's views are meaningless if he's not capable of getting support for his views a little further down the line.

What the Republicans have learned is that the career bureaucrats are the people who control what's going on. No candidate can micromanage everything and everyone. They are still there running their departments after the "big guy" is gone.

EDIT: I didn't word that last sentence very clearly. It should read "Those bureaucrats will still be there running their departments after the "big guy" is gone. Sorry.

Modified by srellim234 at 5:13 PM 8/25/2008
Modified by srellim234 at 5:14 PM 8/25/2008

[spngr311]

Looks like he's being gracious and mature to me.

You know that has no place in politics! You should know this by now! LOL!

The original post was a very good read. It was good to read, even though I don't agree with the ending editorial.

[AZhitman]

No prob bro., fixed yur typo.

Might wanna spell "becoming" correctly next time you play spell-checker on me, Homey.