The XX Factor: What women really think.

Vice President Biden is Way Totally a Ladies' Man

This afternoon—between Specter defections, Clinton-Obama joint appearances and a rare Tony Bennett sighting, one of the strangest I’ve spent on Capitol Hill—it’s worth looking miles from the Beltway, to Austin, Texas, where Vice President Joe Biden toured the National Domestic Violence Hotline Center. Joined by Austin Mayor Will Wynn, Biden surveyed the complex that hosts the hotline and other programs designed to help women, especially those suffering from emotional and physical abuse, help themselves. From the press pool report:

[Biden] was guided to the crinkled paper on the wall with the 2-millioncalls’ notation. With a marker, he wrote above that notation: “Keep thefaith! You are changing womens’ lives one woman at a time” beforeputting his signature below his message. Folks in the room broke intoapplause. VPOTUS then hugged Cindy Loper, a staff member whose cubicleis near the crinkled-paper wall.

VPOTUS briefly held staff member Anna Truchard’s hand—saying “we’vealready met; we’re old buddies”-- before continuing his walk-through... Atthe south end of the room, he hovered over staff members taking callsin Spanish.

VPOTUS then crossed the hall into a room where about 20 people wereclustered in anticipation of a group photograph. The people includingMarta Pelaez, described to me later as president and ceo of one of thelargest women’s shelters in San Antonio, spoke quietly to him beforeVPOTUS said over the past 15 years, he’s often been approached by womengiving thanks for the act leading to the center. “It is a big deal,” hesaid.

“We need someone to advocate for us and you are that person,” Pelaez said.

“Wellbaby, I ain’t going away,” he said, adding that he’s lined up two womento fill administration positions focus on preventing domestic violence. 

What a guy! It’s easy to joke, as Sarah Palin did, about the vice president being dispatched to various funerals and second-tier conferences, but today Biden provided needed exposure for this increasingly critical resource and also provided an important reminder as to why these caricatures don't apply to him.

Biden’s authorship of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) in 1994 was a remarkable piece of legislative doggedness, as chronicled by Fred Strebeigh in the New Republic last summer. The bill’s passage also depended in large part on the work of a group of female lawyers that Biden trusted and heeded at key moments in the fight to keep its provisions legal (a tale that Strebeigh also relates in his new book, Equal). Biden takes the thought of abuse so seriously, apparently, that people think he's been affected himself.

VPOTUS said everybody thinks he has a family member who was the victimof violence. “Thank god they weren’t,” he said. “I was raised by areally gentle decent man who thought the single greatest, the cardinalsin for real of all cardinal sins was the abuse of power. The ultimateabuse of power was for a man to raise his hand to a woman, or for awoman or man to raise their hand to a child. That’s the ultimate,that’s the serious abuse of power that can exist.”

With that kind of empathetic statement, I’d say that the vice president could stand to be known for more than verbal diddles and a prizefighter’s honor—his support of women’s rights makes far more of an impression.

ALSO: Via the White House, some background and additional resources:

Since the hotline center’s founding in 1996—spurred by congressionalapproval of the VPOTUS-sponsored Violence Against Women Act in 1994—thehotline has fielded more than 2 million calls. Its number is800-799-7233 (SAFE).

The Love is Respect hotline, focused on teen-agers, has handledmore than 25,000 calls and online chats since it started as ahotline-center project in November 2007. The hotline is called theNational Teen Dating Abuse Hotline; it’s 866-331-9474. Both hotlinesare open around the clock 365 days a year. The teen online chatsite—www.loveisrespect.org--is live from 4 p.m. to midnight Sundaythrough Friday, year-round.