Biden Quits Race, Cites Mistakes : Says ‘Exaggerated Shadow’ of Errors Blurred Candidacy

Delaware Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. abandoned his quest for the Democratic presidential nomination Wednesday, blaming the “exaggerated shadow” of mistakes that he complained had begun “to obscure the essence of my candidacy.”

His wife, Jill, and his sister and campaign manager, Valerie Owens, who fought back tears, were at his side in a Senate hearing room as the 44-year-old Biden made an even-tempered but emotional farewell to the campaign.

Displaying the oratorical flair that had distinguished his candidacy, Biden said that, although events had left him little choice but to withdraw, he had reached the decision with “incredible reluctance” and with anger at himself “for having put myself in this position of making this choice.”

Bork Hearings

Biden made his announcement just before returning to confirmation hearings for controversial Supreme Court nominee Robert H. Bork, of which he is chairman--a position that Biden’s supporters had hoped would vault him into the forefront of the presidential race.

Those hopes were shattered by disclosures within the last two weeks that Biden had often borrowed speech rhetoric from other politicians at home and abroad, had plagiarized parts of a law school paper and had misrepresented his academic record.

Biden’s departure is unlikely to have great impact on the competition among the remaining six Democratic presidential candidates. Because the Delaware senator so far had not built significant support in the electorate, he was generally lumped together in the second tier of contenders behind the two regarded as having mounted the strongest campaigns thus far, Massachusetts Gov. Michael S. Dukakis and Missouri Rep. Richard A. Gephardt.

Issue of Character

But his departure will strongly underline the significance of personal character in this campaign. That is the issue over which Biden stumbled and which four months ago turned Democratic front-runner Gary Hart into a political dropout.

Democratic Rep. Patricia Schroeder of Colorado, who will announce Monday whether she will enter the presidential race, called Biden’s announcement “one more down note” in the campaign. “I think we all get tarnished by that type of news,” she said. “If you run for the public trust, it’s incumbent that you act in the public interest.”

As Hart’s experience demonstrated, issues that raise questions about a candidate’s character and temperament can quickly grow into serious problems, no matter how strong a campaign has been.

In his 10-minute withdrawal statement, Biden generally avoided the peevish tone that dominated Hart’s farewell, when he denounced the political system for its excessive focus on personality.

Biden, obviously exercising self-restraint, frequently flashed the tight smile that in the past has been the precursor to a show of temper. But there was no such outburst.

In his strongest complaint, he said that he was frustrated by “the environment of presidential politics that makes it so difficult for the American people to measure the whole of Joe Biden and not just the misstatements that I have made.”

He cast his decision as a sacrifice of his presidential campaign in order to honor his commitment to defeating the Bork nomination.

“I have been here long enough to know that, when the tide starts to roll and things start to move,” Biden said, “it requires all of one’s time, energy and concentration to put it back on track.” He said he needed all the energy and time he could muster in the fight against Bork, whose appointment he argued would cause harm to court and country.

“There will be many opportunities for me to run for President again,” he said, but not so many to influence the shaping of the court.

Staff May Break Up

Members of Biden’s staff are esteemed for their experience in presidential campaigns, but it was not clear which of the other candidates would be able to recruit them. “We’ll probably all go in different directions,” said William Daley, Biden’s national political director and son of the late Mayor Richard J. Daley of Chicago.

In the end, Biden’s chief legacy may be as an example of the emphasis on character in this campaign.

The prominence of this concern arises in part from the lack of great ideological or substantive differences among the current crop of Democratic candidates, all of whom have sought to shift to the center in the wake of their party’s two consecutive landslide defeats in presidential elections.

Also contributing, many believe, has been the Iran- contra scandal, which, because it has been widely interpreted as reflecting flaws in President Reagan’s leadership style rather than his policies, has intensified stress on the so-called character issue.

Both Hart and Biden became involved in episodes that tended to reinforce misgivings held by political insiders and the press about particular alleged weaknesses in their characters. In Hart’s case, this was the perception of a general unsteadiness of judgment and seemingly arrogant disregard for the possible consequences of his private actions--qualities exemplified by his reputed womanizing and given credence by the Miami Herald’s disclosure of his ill-fated weekend rendezvous with model Donna Rice.

Superficiality Suspected

With Biden, his supposed weakness grew out of suspicions that his approach to campaigning and to the substantive responsibilities of office was tinged with superficiality--that he offered more sizzle than steak, as some critics said. In what is certainly the fundamental irony of his presidential candidacy, those misgivings were grounded directly in what everyone agreed was his greatest political strength--his oratorical skill.

Biden was able to rouse Democratic audiences to enthusiasm in a way none of his rivals, except civil rights leader Jesse Jackson, could match. His good looks, his lithe figure, his Irish charm all combined to provide what American Enterprise Institute analyst Norman Ornstein called “an earthy magnetism”--and the promise of an electricity that the Democratic Party had not been able to offer the nation since the Kennedy brothers.

But it was just this dazzle that invited the suspicion in some quarters that not much lurked beneath the flashing surface. Biden’s problem was comparable, as New York Gov. Mario M. Cuomo once warned him in a private conversation, to that of a beautiful woman no one will credit with intelligence.

“If you want to be the dumb blonde of the party,” Cuomo needled Biden, “the guy who can give you a speech but can’t count, I’ll be glad to go around the country billing you that way.”

‘You Talk Too Much’

Others warned Biden more directly. “You talk too much and you say things without thinking about them,” Ornstein, a friend and admirer, told the senator as he was gearing up for his candidacy.

“I know I’ve got to be more disciplined,” Biden replied.

But, as Ornstein said this week: “It’s easier to say that than do that. Besides, he probably didn’t believe it in his heart.”

In his statement Wednesday, Biden explained his conduct by his desire to reawaken the spark of idealism that he remembered in the America of his youth. “Very frankly, in my zeal to rekindle that idealism, I made some mistakes,” he said.

Plagiarism in Law School

Those included borrowing--without attributing it--a dramatic passage of personal reminiscence from British Labor Party leader Neil Kinnock to use in a televised campaign debate in Des Moines and in an appeal for support from the National Education Assn. Later, it was disclosed that as a student he had plagiarized parts of a law school paper.

There was also an episode in which Biden lost his temper with a New Hampshire citizen who asked him about his law school grades. It was then that Biden claimed to have finished far higher in his law school class than he did.