Joe et Jill Biden: une vie "ordinaire"

J'aime bien ce petit survol de la vie du couple Biden depuis que Joe est Vice-président. Est-il vraiment possible vivre "normalement" quand on est le bras droit du Président des États-Unis? Biden a un style et des habitudes bien à lui. Déjà comme sénateur, il détonnait un peu en ne vivant pas à Washington D.C.. Je dois avouer que je suis surpris de la retenue affichée par Biden dans un rôle de second plan, lui qui était habitué à s'exprimer librement, et parfois de manière spectaculaire, sur tous les sujets.

Un extrait:

"Vice President Joe Biden sometimes escapes from Washington by catching Amtrak to Wilmington, a place where folks still call him by his first name. His wife, Jill, balances her White House duties with a day job as an English professor at a community college, where she shares a cubicle with a colleague and holds regular office hours for her students.

He routinely goes out for pizza with friends and buys his button-downs at Brooks Brothers. She drops by the neighborhood Safeway to pick up fruit and takes long runs on Massachusetts Avenue. The couple often go to the movies. And, like normal people, occasionally they get turned away, as they were when “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” was sold out.

Despite an official residence, a retinue of Secret Service officers protecting them and a schedule packed with vice presidential duties, Biden and his wife are living the semblance of a normal life that their neighbors a couple of miles away at the White House can only dream about. While President Barack Obama has complained that he misses casual walks around the block and first lady Michelle Obama told Oprah Winfrey she dreams of shopping at Target, Joe and Jill Biden have managed to hang on to their identities as regular people and explore Washington like the newcomers to the city they essentially are.

Biden has spent 36 years in the Senate and 2½ as vice president, but he and his wife are still tourists navigating Washington’s terrain. Unlike most lawmakers who live around the Capitol, then-Sen. Biden boarded the train each night for the 90-minute commute home, earning him the nickname “Amtrak Joe.” As a result, he is the first vice president to occupy the grounds of the Naval Observatory who hadn’t previously resided in Washington.

The couple now spend most weekdays at the Naval Observatory and split their weekends between Washington and Wilmington, where they have a house that the vice president helped design. It is there, at their lakeside home, that the Bidens feel most at ease, friends and family say.

But those same friends add that the Bidens are increasingly comfortable in Washington. They brought their casual style to Number One Observatory Circle, hanging their grandchildren’s artwork on the walls and decorating their pool house with Tiffany-blue walls and seashell displays. Friends say the Biden grandchildren are always over and, when the weather is warm, playing in the residence’s pool.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0611/57887.html