The Poignant But Complicated Friendship of Joe Biden and Barack Obama

[Drunken Irishman]

This is an interesting look at their relationship. It's not a puff piece by any standard - but I think it really gets to the heart of their differences and why they became so close.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/magazine/wp/2019/07/30/feature/the-poignant-but-complicated-friendship-of-joe-biden-and-barack-obama/

For his part, Biden was bowled over by Obama’s March 2008 speech on race, which confronted the festering controversy over his relationship with Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Blinken told me that, the day after the address, Biden asked him, “Did you hear that speech?” The future vice president, he recalls, was palpably excited. “That is maybe the best speech I’ve heard a political leader give,” Biden raved. Blinken believes that was a “click moment” for Biden, stirring a “newfound respect and admiration” for Obama.

Biden’s campaign for president soon flamed out, and after Obama secured the nomination he began vetting his former competitor as his running mate. Biden had a clear idea of what he expected of his role as vice president: He wanted to create a relationship based in part on the extraordinary arrangement Vice President Walter Mondale had worked out with President Jimmy Carter 32 years earlier — one that vastly expanded the duties and power of the second-in-command.

In his early discussions on the position, Biden told Obama that he wanted the president and vice president’s interaction to be deep and personal, even combative if necessary; he wanted to be Obama’s chief counselor; he wanted to be in attendance at every important meeting; he wanted his views considered on every crucial decision on both foreign and domestic policy; he wanted to advise and participate in legislative efforts; he wanted to be the last guy in the room whispering in Obama’s ear; and he wanted a private meeting, perhaps lunch, with the president every week. Maybe most important, given Biden’s nature, he wanted to be able to speak with absolute candor.

When Biden spoke out of turn, Obama recognized that his mistakes were not consequential and didn’t impair the partnership; in fact they were often regarded as signs of Biden’s authenticity. Obama and Biden grew not only to admire and respect each other; they developed genuine camaraderie. Liz Allen, who served alternately on the staffs of both Obama and Biden, told me: “They each had to let go of things to trust the other guy.” As a sign of his trust, Obama accepted all of Biden’s demands for the role of the vice president, and throughout their two terms, he was true to the arrangement.

W
hatever the political maneuvering, their White House partnership had already blossomed into genuine friendship. And the affection Obama and Biden had for each other was nowhere more pronounced than in the traumatic days of Beau Biden’s illness and death. Beau’s first hint of trouble came in 2010 when he woke up one morning paralyzed on one side of his body and unable to speak. The symptoms, which pointed to a stroke, disappeared after a few hours at a hospital.

Biden had raced off to be with his son, and when he returned, Obama ran to greet the worried father. Axelrod saw the president sprint toward the vice president’s office, he told me, “and I saw them in an embrace.”

Though Beau seemed fine after his stroke scare, uncertainty hovered over the family and everyone close, including the president. One of Obama’s defining virtues was his rigorous preparation for every meeting; he always read his brief and arrived ready for deep engagement in the topic at hand. However, Axelrod recounted to me that at one meeting Obama was unusually distracted. “He simply wasn’t attending,” the senior adviser remembered. “He was looking out the window. People were talking.” But Obama’s mind was elsewhere. “Finally, he said, ‘I don’t know how Joe is going to go on if something happens to Beau.’ ”

Over the next two years, Beau submitted to a range of powerful treatments, and throughout it all, Obama was at Biden’s side. When Biden mentioned during one of their private lunches that he might take a second mortgage on his home for the family’s medical bills, Obama got up from the table and put his hands on his friend’s shoulders. “Don’t do that,” Obama told him, as Biden recounted in his memoir. “I’ll give you the money. I have it. You can pay me back whenever.” (The Biden family never needed to avail itself of Obama’s generosity.) At another weekly lunch together, Biden fought to control his emotions as he filled the president in on the details of Beau’s treatment. He outlined the medical strategy in cold clinical language in the hope that this type of detachment would snuff the welling of his tears. But his performance didn’t fool the president, whose own eyes moistened. “He is not a demonstrative man, in public or in private, and I felt bad,” Biden recalled in his memoir. “I found myself trying to console him.” Finally, Obama said simply: “Life is so difficult to discern.”

Biden was all heart, Obama all brain. In going with Clinton over Biden, Obama went with the brain rather than the heart. The irony of his decision lingers. We all know what happened to Clinton in November 2016. We also know that Biden was strong in those Midwestern states that were her undoing. Instead of carrying his legacy into a Clinton presidency, Obama has had to stand by largely in silence as Donald Trump has worked to roll back his achievements in health care, civil rights, worker and consumer safety, immigration, education, and environmental protection.

Obama and Biden largely disappeared for the first year and a half of the Trump administration, out of a sense of protocol. When they made a surprise visit to Dog Tag Bakery in Georgetown for lunch on July 30, 2018, the Internet lit up and the media celebrated their reemergence. The headline on the Cosmopolitan website read: “Barack Obama and Joe Biden Went to Lunch Yesterday and It Was Cuter Than Your Last Date.” The New York Daily News took the opportunity to repost a 17-photo retrospective of the pair’s “bromance through the years.”

Yet as Biden pondered another run for president in 2020, the deep complexities of their relationship reemerged. Obama again hesitated to embrace his vice president. Hewing to his steadfast political pragmatism, Obama refrained from an early endorsement, and as other Democratic hopefuls considered, or announced, their bids for 2020, he met with them.

Now, the sweetest years of the friendship are likely behind them. But that doesn’t mean it was all a mirage. Biden has a favorite story, which he told at his Medal of Freedom ceremony in the last days of the administration. Despite being lifted up and knocked down by Obama, he still reveled in the moment they realized their rapport. About six months into the first term, he and Obama were having one of their weekly lunches — just the two of them — in the president’s private dining room when it hit them. As Biden told it, Obama looked at him and said, “You know, Joe. You know what surprised me? How we’ve become such good friends.” Joe, grinning and twinkling, delivered his comeback: “And I said, ‘Surprised you?’ ”

No question an interesting dynamic. And I have no question that when Biden wins the nomination, Obama will be one of his fiercest advocates on the national stage.

[asiliveandbreathe]

1. Wonderful statement - I would love to see President Obama bring ALL his might to the natl stage...

Not only for Biden, who is a formidable candidate in his own right, but for the unity of the country..why should President Obama have to

stand by largely in silence as Donald Trump has worked to roll back his achievements in health care, civil rights, worker and consumer safety, immigration, education, and environmental protection.

Too much on the line

No question an interesting dynamic. And I have no question that when Biden wins the nomination, Obama will be one of his fiercest advocates on the national stage. - thank you Drunken Irishman

[Cha]

2. KR to read

when I get a chance.

Thank You!