Why Beau Biden Is At War With His Dad's White House

When Joe Biden won the vice presidency in November 2008, few imagined that his son Beau, Delaware’s attorney general and a leading candidate to replace his dad in the Senate, would be a thorn in the side of the Obama administration. And yet as one of the lead “rogue” attorneys general unwilling to accept the roughly $20 billion deal the White House hopes to broker between the 50 states and the biggest banks to settle widespread claims of mortgage fraud and abuse over the past decade, Biden symbolizes the in-fighting among Democrats over the fate of the American financial system.

An Iraq War veteran and graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, Biden went to Syracuse for law school, just like his father did. He served in the Department of Justice in the 1990s before winning the race for Delaware attorney general in 2006. When trying to piece apart what it is about the Obama administration’s approach to the big banks that strikes the younger Biden as misguided, it’s best not to over-think it.