While researching this piece on Vice President Joe Biden, I came across a lot of photo essays of Biden. There’s Buzzfeed’s “18 Pictures That Show What Joe Biden is Really Like“. The Huffington Post published ”9 Photos of Joe Biden Making Faces in Front of 10 Downing Street“. Mother Jones has ”Photos: Joe Biden Unleashed”. Then, of course, there’s the Onion’s photogallery documenting faux-Biden’s vice presidency.
Pool
These galleries are great, because Joe Biden takes some hilarious pictures (and because the folks at the Onion are good at Photoshop). But they’re so common that they’ve become a bit misleading. Pretty much all the pictures you see of Joe Biden online are pictures where Joe Biden looks like he’s about to do a kegstand. But when you actually search the photo archives for pictures of Joe Biden, what you mostly get are… pictures of Vice President Joe Biden. Not hilarious pictures. Not photos of a shirtless Biden waxing a Pontiac. Just pictures of the vice president doing vice presidential things. Pictures like these.
Here’s Vice President Joe Biden walking with the president:
Pete Souza/White House
The vice president often has to stand quietly and not make any noise or funny faces while the president speaks. Joe Biden does this a lot:
Mark Wilson/Getty Images
Like, a lot a lot.
Photo by Kristoffer Tripplaar-Pool/Getty Images
Someone’s got to keep the president company on a stroll. Guess who that someone is?
Pete Souza/White House
Meetings. Vice President Joe Biden attends lots of meetings.
JEWEL SAMAD/AFP/Getty Images
Lots of meetings.
Pete Souza/White House
Oof. Meetings.
Pete Souza/White House
Vice presidents need to sign stuff.
Pete Souza/White House
Here’s Joe Biden listening to Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko give a speech:
(Photo by Nikki Kahn/The Washington Post via Getty Images
Somebody has to swear in the new Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, and that somebody is Vice President Joe Biden:
Win McNamee/Getty Images
Sometimes the old HUD Secretary becomes OMB director and somebody needs to swear him in a second time. That somebody is also Vice President Joe Biden:
Mark Wilson/Getty Images
Joe Biden just looks like your everyday vice president conducting a press conference here. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk looks like he’s about to turn into the Incredible Hulk.
AFP PHOTO / JANEK SKARZYNSKI
And one of the most important parts of being vice president: standing in front of American flags.
PETRAS MALUKAS/AFP/Getty Images
