Promise Me, Dad: A Year of Hope, Hardship, and Purpose

by Joe Biden

annual summer trip to one of the national parks.

I have come to believe that the first duty of a public servant is to help bring people together, especially in crisis, especially across difficult divides, to show respect for everybody at the table, and to help find a safe way forward.

President Obama did not easily place his trust in others. He “travels light,” one staffer said of him.

sometimes I thought he was deliberate to a fault.

“Remember, Mr. President,” I would say when it was just the two of us, “the country can never be more hopeful than its president.

human beings were also capable of looking the other way and remaining silent when awful things were happening all around them.

I have spent countless hours trying to build trust across those divides, and I have always followed my father’s advice: Never tell a man what his interests are. Be straight and open with him about your own interests. And try to put yourself in his shoes. Try to understand his hopes and his limitations, and never insist that he do something you know he cannot. It’s really just about making the effort to make a personal connection.

I had always tried to impart to my children the lesson that my mother taught me, my sister, and my brothers: There is no one in the world you are closer to than your brother and sister. You have to be able to count on each other.

To the right and fifteen or twenty feet away I could see the large fellowship hall where the Bible study group met. Nine good people had been killed on this floor, right beneath the pews, just eleven days earlier, but this parish persevered. Church members had filled in the bullet holes with putty and continued the regular Wednesday night Bible study without missing a single week. One hundred and fifty people showed up for the Bible class the first Wednesday after the massacre. “This territory belongs to God,” Reverend Goff had told the world.