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He did a GREAT JOB!
THE WHITE HOUSE

Office of the Vice President
Internal Transcript September 27, 2011


REMARKS BY VICE PRESIDENT JOSEPH BIDEN
ON "THE VIEW"

ABC Studios
New York, New York

11:22 A.M. EDT


Q Please welcome back to "The View," the Vice President of the United States, Joe Biden. (Applause.)

Q You're my favorite Democrat.

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Congratulations, Whoopi.

Q Thank you.

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Congratulations --

Hi folks, how are you? (Applause.)

Q Well you look bright and trim after you just heard us bashing that poor governor of New Jersey. You look great.

THE VICE PRESIDENT: No comment. (Laughter.)

Q You don't have to make one.

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Actually Christie is a good guy. Christie is a fellow University of Delaware graduate, and a phenomenal football fan. He comes to all our home games.

Q Are you a Republican or a Democrat? What are you doing here?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: I like him. I like him.

Q You can like him; you still don't want him to be President.

THE VICE PRESIDENT: That's true. (Laughter.) That's true.

Q You think he'd be a good candidate since you brought him up?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, New Jersey is a big, important state. He's doing -- he's at the top of his game right now, and our Republican friends seem to be, sort of, not satisfied.

Q What do you think of Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, who else is there? Romney --

Q Huntsman.

Q What do you think of them?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, look. I think all of them, with maybe the exception of Huntsman, are -- have the same sort of value set. They think that the way to move the country forward is in a fundamentally different way than we think to move it forward. So I don't see a lot of difference in terms -- like, for example, Social Security. They're beating up Perry for saying it's a Ponzi scheme, but yet everyone else on that stage wants to privatize it. So I don't see much difference, and the question is -- whomever the nominee is -- I think there's going to be stark choices between the President and me, and whomever their nominees are in terms of our --

Q What did you -- I have to ask you. What did you think of the booing that went on the other day about the gay soldier? Did you have a visceral response to it?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: I did have a visceral response, and I'm not sure it's because my son spent a year in Iraq. And I know my son and all the kids with him -- kids, they're grown men. I don't think they give a damn whether a guy firing a rifle to protect them is gay or straight. I don't think they care about that. And, look, this kid risked his life, this kid is there for a year, and I, quite frankly, I thought it was reprehensible.

Q Right.

Q And no one spoke up. That entire panel, not one person said anything.

Q Can I move on? Because I know this is a very emotional subject for you. Right off the bat, you will be the vice presidential candidate again, next year?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: I haven't figured out how not to be. (Laughter.) No, I --

Q So the answer is yes?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: The answer is yes. The answer is yes.

Q Okay.

Q Okay, good.

Q Now we had Vice President -- former Vice President -- Dick Cheney on with us last weekend, and he was very close to President Bush. He was involved in nearly every decision, and one of the criticism, you know Mr. Vice President, is that our President doesn't really listen to anybody, even people in his inner circle. Does he listen to you, and can you give us an example of where your opinion might have --

Q You're talking about Obama. I thought you were talking about Bush.

Q No, I'm talking about Obama.

Q Okay.

Q No, I said our President now. Our President now is Obama.

Q Yes, got you.

Q Okay.

THE VICE PRESIDENT: There are a number of instances. But it would be inappropriate for me -- the deal -- when the President and I agreed that I'd be on the ticket -- he asked me and I agreed to be on the ticket, the one thing that I asked, and he's kept it, this promise, was that I'd be the last guy in the room, literally the last person in the room in every major decision. And I can tell you, without fear of contradiction, that he has totally -- he seeks opinions from everyone in his inner circle.
And I have a bad reputation for being very blunt and straight. And I have made clear to the President my views, and on 85 percent of what he has asked me for his opinion on we've agreed. So I find a guy who -- look, I've been there for eight Presidents. There's only two that I knew who seemed totally prepared to listen to an alternative view; and if you made the better case, they'd say, well, okay, I understand that. And he is one of those guys.

Now, it would be inappropriate for me -- in private discussion with the President -- telling you how I may or may not have impacted his view on Afghanistan or on the jobs bill or on whatever. But I promise you. I promise you.

Q Yes, it's kind of pick on the President -- it's getting -- that's the --

Q There's a book out --

Q All right -- "Confidence Men," you know the book?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Yes.

Q I have to follow up, because this book claims that there is sexism in the White House, that people are saying that they're worried about his leadership. What do you think about that?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, I don't know who they're talking to. Look, obviously, they didn't talk to Michelle Obama or Jill Biden, because if there's sexism in the White House, the person engaging in it is in trouble. But, look, I'm not suggesting that there's not some instance where a staffer thought that they were not treated well.

But look at the high-ranking -- on my staff, on the President's staff, 70 percent of the high-ranking people on my staff -- from my communications director, my policy advisor, they're all women. And I literally -- when this came out, I asked them -- I asked them, have they seen it? And nobody is aware.

And, by the way, that quote was, "But for the President." I don't get that. I look at the people around the President and I don't see any of it. I really don't.

Q I saw you went to put your hand on Joy's leg, but you took it off. You stopped. (Laughter.)

Q Any time, Mr. Vice President. My leg is your leg. (Laughter and applause.)

THE VICE PRESIDENT: My leg doesn't look as good as your leg. (Laughter.)

Q Leave it alone.

Q The Vice President is going to stay with us, because not just to -- because we wanted to get his political opinion, but he is doing something extremely valuable for the young women in this nation and we want to talk about it. Stay with us. We'll be right back with the Vice President. (Applause.)

* * * * *

Q And we are back with the lovely Vice President Joe Biden.

Q The lovely Vice President?

Q I like him. I like him. (Laughter.)

Q What did I say when you came in? You're my favorite Democrat?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: You did.

Q I think you're everybody's favorite Democrat. (Applause.)

Q So this is the 17th anniversary of the Violence Against Women Act, and you've been involved with this for many, many years -- for over 20 years. Why did this become so important to you?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: It's the single most significant thing I've ever done in my life. And back -- I was raised by a dad who talked about the worst -- the cardinal sin of all sins was the abuse of power. I mean, literally -- and he would talk about it. And the most serious abuse of that power is a man to raise his fist to a child or a woman or someone smaller than he is he can physically dominate, and it's just cowardice.

And we were raised that we were to intervene. We were to -- if we saw it, we were to say something. We were to literally step in the middle. I mean that was my -- my dad was a gentle, gentle man. And so when I got in the United States Senate, I was on the Judiciary Committee. And I was supposedly -- it sounds self-serving -- the expert on criminal -- on violent crime in America. I spent hundreds of hours at hearings.

And when violent crime was really rising, especially when crack cocaine hit the screen in the '70s and early '80s, I held a series of hearings, and there was a startling figure that came out, that violent crime against young men between ages of 16 and 30 actually dropped; but among women, it went up considerably. And I couldn't understand why. And I started holding hearings, and one thing led to another. And so I introduced this legislation called the Violence Against Women Act. But the --

Q So what did it do? I mean how did it change things?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: It did a number of things. First of all, to get you to the end, domestic violence in America is down 50 -- violence against women is down 50 percent since the passage of the Violence Against Women Act -- 50 percent.

But what it changed things -- it empowered a lot of young women. I was talking with one of your folks backstage saying when I was young, it was something we didn't talk about if you --

Q That's right.

THE VICE PRESIDENT: If your boyfriend slapped you, if your husband banged you around, if you walked in to work with a black eye, so I ran into the door.

Q Yes.

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Because it was viewed as not only something that was done to you -- women were made -- the cultural norm was women were made to feel badly about it. I remember there was this really lovely young woman, and her name was Marla. She was a model here in New York City. Her --

Q I remember this. Marla Hanson.

Q She gets slashed.

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Marla Hanson.

Q Yes.

THE VICE PRESIDENT: And so I had her come and talk to me, and then I had her testify. And the most startling thing wasn't that this thug or landlord hired two guys to slash her face because she wouldn't go out with him, but I asked her -- I said, what was the response you got from your women friends. And the response was, well, why were you there. Why were you in that bar? The bar was in -- by the way, in the basement -- on the first floor of her hotel. So women -- women have culturally in this country been viewed to -- I must have done something wrong.

I want to make it clear: Never, never, never, never, never does a man have a right to raise his hand to a woman other than in self defense. Never. Never. (Applause.)

Q Mr. Vice President, now you want to do something very important for young women, particularly between the ages of 16 and 24, because you say the highest examples of rape and sexual assault for these women -- what is that you're --

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Sixteen to 24.

Q But what are you trying to do -- pass along?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Very, very briefly, all violence against women has gone down in every age category. The one that's been the most stubborn, and it's the highest now is 16 to 24, girls in high school and women in college.

And so what we're trying to do is take advantage of all the new technology, all the new fora, all the new capabilities we have to empower these young women to understand that there's a way out. We've learned that peer-to-peer help is the most often sought.

So I'm not likely -- your daughter, God forbid, if it happened, is not likely to -- as likely to go to mom as she is to her best friend.

Q Right.

THE VICE PRESIDENT: And she's -- and if she's going to tell even her best friend, she'd rather text it to her than tell it to her.

Q Right.

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Because the -- and so what we've done is we have -- I've called -- I've gotten over a hundred university presidents together telling them what -- and we've changed the rule, Title IX. Title IX -- everybody thinks of Title IX, women's sports.

Q Yes.

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, it's much beyond women's sports. We say, hey, look, if the college isn't going out of their way to make it safer for women to be on that campus, they can be held in violation of Title IX and lose their money.

Q Accountability.

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Accountability.

Q Which is exactly what we need.

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Accountability. And by the way, the other piece of this is colleges -- for example, in those early hearings I had -- held, I had a counselor -- a college counselor saying to a young woman who had just been raped, now, look, what you got to do is you got to keep your grades up so you can transfer. Instead of pulling her --

Q What?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Oh, by the -- no, by the way, this is -- there's a cultural norm that we still haven't completely broken down that somehow - somehow -- for example, Barbara, I told you about -- and thank you for doing this -- I contacted Barbara a while ago and asked about this. I told you about this study that was done just recently; and sixth graders, and they're asked the question, is it all right for a boyfriend to slap his girlfriend if he's angry with her. And the answer is -- 24 percent said yes, it's all right to do that.

Q 24 percent --

THE VICE PRESIDENT: 24 percent.
Q And now too you see Internet -- I mean use -- they're also -- young men are using Internet photos, et cetera to actually pull acts from women, use them to bully them into committing to sex.

Q Blackmailing them.

Q Blackmailing them, threatening them.

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Absolutely.

Q So that's another whole aspect we're getting into. We do want to thank you. You have one more question before we go, Whoop?

Q Yes. And will you just also remind people that -- remind the women that the way to get a man's attention is not to hit him. Do not hit him. (Applause.) Because it -- this is something -- violence in itself is something we need to teach kids not to perpetrate on each other, no?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Look, it's -- of all the violent criminals behind bars in jail, there are only two things in common. One is they can't read and, two, is that they witnessed their mother or someone in their household being beaten by their father.

Q Yes.

THE VICE PRESIDENT: And then they repeat the act. You'd think it would be the opposite.

Q So we got to stop it.

THE VICE PRESIDENT: You'd think -- but it's a learned behavior. It's a learned behavior.

Q This is a wonderful campaign. We are so thankful that Vice President Joe Biden is going to stick around.

END 11:40 A.M. EDT