Joe Biden stated that he hopes his legacy is to reduce the chances of war and said he was motivated to do so “because of Vietnam.”
Biden, 81, was first elected to the US Senate in 1972, at the age of 29, when the Vietnam War was in full swing and hundreds of thousands of Americans were being drafted into the military.
He himself never participated in the conflict, instead receiving five student deferments and then a disqualification on medical grounds.
The disqualification was for having suffered from asthma when he was a teenager, although he was a student athlete.
When asked about his legacy during an interview with Univision on Wednesday, the President said: “Well, I hope the legacy is that I kept my word, that… I said the reason I was running was to help the life of ordinary people and reduce the prospect of war and… because of Vietnam.
President Biden, in an interview with Univision, said he first ran to “reduce the prospect of a war…because of Vietnam.” He said he hopes his legacy after more than 50 years of public service is that he kept his word.
President Joe Biden at the age of 25. Biden went to the University of Delaware as an undergraduate and then to Syracuse to study law. He received five student draft deferments and a medical exemption.
Biden as newly elected Democratic senator from Delaware in December 1972
He continued: ‘The secret you need to ask yourself is: why are you willing to lose? When you figure out why you’re willing to lose, you have an idea of what you should do. So I hope my legacy is that I was honest, direct and did what I said.”
Biden’s comments on the Vietnam War revived scrutiny of his own decisions and positions at the time.
Democrats have frequently criticized Donald Trump for not serving in Vietnam, but neither did Biden.
In 1972 he ran for the Senate on a platform of opposing the escalation of the war promoted by President Richard Nixon and saying that the United States should have left Vietnam years earlier.
Biden had already received five student draft deferments, first as an undergraduate at the University of Delaware and then as a law student at Syracuse University, where he graduated in 1968.
A month after undergoing a physical examination in April 1968, Biden received a ‘1-Y’ classification, meaning he was available for duty only in the event of a national emergency.
In 2008, Obama campaign officials released Biden’s Selective Service records to the Associated Press as then-vice presidential candidate.
An Obama spokesman at the time said the exemption was “due to asthma as a teenager.”
It came even though he claimed in his own book that he was a star athlete in high school and college and often mentioned his time as a lifeguard in the summer.
Biden’s Selective Service System registration card from 1961. After obtaining a draft card, Biden received five student deferments and a medical exemption to avoid serving in Vietnam.
While he opposed the war during his first Senate campaign, he was also not one to attend anti-Vietnam War protests.
Biden once said in a press conference that when people were marching and carrying signs, he was in Washington voting against the war and before that he was in law school and married.
‘I’m not a carpenter… I was out of sync with, when the war movement was at its height, when I was in Syracuse, I was married. I was in law school. He wore sports coats. I was not part of that,” Biden said in 1987.
Donald Trump at the New York Military Academy in 1964. He received five deferments and a medical exemption during the Vietnam War.
Former President Donald Trump, who was born in 1946, also did not serve in the Vietnam War, unlike many members of his generation.
The former president received four draft deferments while studying at Fordham and then the University of Pennsylvania.
After graduating in 1968, he received a medical exemption. The reason was bone spurs in the heels.
He gave him the same ‘1-Y’ rating as Biden.
Trump told a newspaper in 2016 that the bone spurs were “temporary” and “minor.” He also said that he didn’t remember when they stopped bothering him.
Former President Bill Clinton also came of age during the Vietnam War, but he also did not serve.
He also received educational deferments and was later granted permission to join ROTC at the University of Arkansas School of Law.
That allowed him to go to Oxford University and he did not serve in the ROTC.
President George W. Bush graduated from Yale in 1968, enlisted in the Texas Air National Guard and did not go to Vietnam.