For Biden, politics are often framed by the personal

Sign up for the daily Inside Washington email for exclusive US coverage and analysis sent to your inbox Get our free Inside Washington email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Please try again later {{ /verifyErrors }} When grieving with those who lost loved ones in a building collapse, President Joe Biden invoked the car crash that claimed members of his own family decades ago. Biden spoke of wanting to switch places with a lost or missing loved one and lamented that “the waiting, the waiting, is unbearable.” “The people you may have lost — they’re going to be with you your whole life,” he told the families. Biden appeared to pay the chill no mind, remaining for the entirety of the 75-minute ceremony and mouthing the words to the closing rendition of “God Bless America.” “For Joe Biden, this isn’t something that he does — this is who he is,” said Anita Dunn, senior White House adviser. I think what you all underestimate, beyond the teaching of reading and writing, adding and subtracting: You give so many kids confidence.” Many presidents draw from their own lives to guide their politics: George W. Bush fashioned a persona as a down-home Texas ranch owner; Bill Clinton frequently invoked his family’s poverty; even Donald Trump told stories of a friend named Jim who no longer felt safe going to Paris as a means to explain his own hard-line immigration policies.