New book gives valuable insight into Joe Biden's rise to the presidency

President Biden this week suffered what most see as a serious setback when he was defeated in the Unites States’ most important election of the year.

The Republican party’s victory in the race for governor of Virginia earlier this week has, for some, sent his presidency into a downward spiral.

The result is seen as a personal rebuke for Biden who had invested closely in the campaign.

But that is not all.

A new book about President Biden and his family sheds fresh light on the man whose success in defeating Donald Trump in last year’s American presidential elections was greeted by many, not just in the States but around the world.

At an age when most are thinking of taking life easier, he has taken n the challenge of leading the Free  World.

The trouble is that the president, it could be argued, does not come out exactly glowingly in the new book just as he failed to spark a Democrat win the key Virginia election.

The book, The Bidens: Inside the First Family’s Fifty-Year Rise to Power, by respected American journalist Ben Schreckinger, is an impressively exhaustive investigation into not just Joe Biden but the entire Biden clan, likening it, in some ways, to the Kennedy’s decades earlier.

Like the Kennedys before them, the Bidens, it is argued, are a tight-knit, idealistic Irish Catholic clan with good looks, dynastic ambitions, and serious personal problems as well.

One of these particularly well aired in the book is a curious saga about an alleged old-style cover up of a story that did the rounds in the run up to the bitter election last autumn.

It has been argued that the story was destroyed by the Establishment in the U.S in order to get President Biden over the finish line in his contest with Trump.

It has been claimed by some that there was widespread media disinformation in a not-very-subtle attempt to protect President Biden in the lead-up to the election.

This concerns a highly explosive story in the New York Post on Joe Biden's activities in Ukraine and China that were said to raise serious questions about his “integrity and ethics.”

What followed, it is claimed, was an attempt to airbrush the story out of existence.

Twitter, it has been alleged, banned any discussion of the reporting or posting of links to the story both publicly and privately on the platform. Facebook is alleged to have algorithmically suppressed the story pending a fact check.

The source of the Post story was a laptop belonging to Biden’s son Hunter which was found in a computer repair shop and later passed to the newspaper.

A group of U.S former intelligence officials said, though, that the laptop material amounted to "Russian disinformation.”

Glenn Greenwald, a political commentator in the U.S, does not go with any of this and has accused the Establishment of a “huge deceit” toward millions of American voters in the weeks before a presidential election.

He said: “There was ample proof from the start that these documents were genuine and that the only ones engaged in "disinformation" and lies was this axis of the CIA, corporate media, and Big Tech.”

Greenwald says that “the most dispositive proof yet” is the new book by Schreckinger, adding “To his great credit, he spent months investigating the key documents published by The New York Post and found definitive proof that these emails and related documents are indisputably authentic.”

Greenwald says the book “finds evidence that some of the purported Hunter Biden laptop material is genuine”.

He added: “The intelligence community, in partnership with Big Tech and the corporate media, disseminated massive lies and disinformation, using censorship and other manipulative techniques, to shape the outcome of what was a close election.”

What is undoubted is that 352 page book, released last August and published by Grand Central Publishing, is a  thought provoking and intelligent contribution to the many books on Biden that have appeared since his much-acclaimed victory over his great protagonist, Donald Trump.

He suggests that the one of the best ways to get a measure on Biden, his values, fears, and motives, “is to understand his family”.

This, he suggests, extends to their Irish (and not-so-Irish) roots, their place in the Delaware political class, their business deals, and their personal struggles and triumphs alike.

He says, “Like the Kennedys before them, the Bidens are a tight-knit, idealistic Irish Catholic clan with good looks, dynastic ambitions, and serious personal problems.”

Following the hotly disputed 2020 election, possibly the most bitter in American history, the book tells the Biden family story in full, from the “secrets” in the deep recesses of Joe Biden’s family tree to his son Hunter's foreign deal-making spree and the Trump clan’s “ham-handed” efforts to exploit it.

The author says: “On November 3, Americans did not just elect Joe Biden: They got a package deal. The tight-knit Biden family—siblings, children, in-laws, and beyond—is coming right along with him. They are sure to play a defining role in his presidency, just as they have in every other one of his endeavours.”

The book, of course, contains many other fascinating revelations about the Biden family, including Joe’s childhood; the stunning 1972 Senate upset engineered by his sister Valerie, and the car accident that took the lives of his first wife and infant daughter soon after.

There’s also great insights in President Biden’s early years in the Senate and his role in the creation of the cozy “Delaware Way” of conducting politics, plus the Biden brothers’ business escapades, including the 1970s rock club rivalry that pitted Jim Biden against Jill’s first husband and ended in a banking scandal.”

Readers also learn about the Delaware lawman who oversaw an FBI investigation into Joe’s 2007 campaign fundraising and now has Hunter in his sights along with Hunter’s close friendship with his Fox News antagonist, Tucker Carlson.

Arguably, however, the most intriguing chapters are those about the laptop and its material.

What exactly did former Trump close aid Steve Bannon really hope to accomplish by giving the contents of “the Laptop from Hell” to the New York Post?

This book is well worth reading for lots of reasons including the “new” evidence that sheds light on the authenticity of Hunter’s alleged computer files.

Schreckinger is a national political correspondent and previously served as GQ's Washington correspondent and covered the rise of Donald Trump as a campaign reporter.

He has also written on politics, economics, culture and their intersections for Slate, Newsweek, the Atlantic, the Boston Globe, Boston Magazine, and the Financial Times, from Boston, Ireland, and Burma. He has appeared on CNN, MSNBC, NPR and the BBC, among others.

President Biden himself is a fascinating and complex character who has overcome personal tragedies, the like of which you not wish on your worst enemy.

This account is another welcome addition to the ever growing volume of testimonies about how President Biden, albeit late in life, assumed to the highest political office in the land. How he meets current and upcoming challenges remains to be seen but, for many, the fact that it is not “The Donald” still occupying the White House is relief enough.

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