Behind the friendship between Barack Obama and Joe Biden was a more complicated relationship, which now drives the former vice president to prove his partner wrong
“He was loyal, I think, to Obama in every way in terms of defending and standing by him, even probably when he disagreed with what Obama was doing,” recalled Leon Panetta, Obama’s secretary of Defense. “To some extent, [he] oftentimes felt that that loyalty was not being rewarded.”
Vice President Joe Biden arrives for a meeting with President Barack Obama , Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and National Security Advisor Tom Donilon in the Oval Office in 2012. | Pete Souza/White House via Getty Images Meanwhile, Biden loyalists stewed, aware that the vice president, who had gotten himself elected to the Senate at age 29 in the year of President Richard M. Nixon’s landslide reelection and served 36 years, had a range of Washington political skills Obama lacked. The president and his closest allies seemed unaware of how he would alienate potential allies with his preachy tone, particularly in Congress, where Biden excelled.
Top: Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama and former primary candidate Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton talk on board Obama’s campaign plane June 27, 2008 en route to a joint campaign event in Manchester, N.H. Bottom: Vice President Joe Biden speaks as President Obama listens during a meeting in the Oval Office in October 2016. | Getty Imagesworked their way through America’s elite colleges.
implementing the administration’s $787 billion economic stimulus package, which the president had delegated to him. Republicans who negotiated with the administration often came away finding Obama condescending and relying on Biden to understand their concerns. But Obama would often convey a weariness with the traditional obligations of political leadership: the glad-handing, the massaging of egos. Sometimes he couldn’t hide his disdain for part of the job he signed up for.
Advance staffers recall that Obama’s speeches were arranged to be delivered alone on the stage with voters behind him, while Biden would push to include every local elected official up there with him, knowing they would love the exposure to the vice president—a chit to cash in later. From early on, however, it became increasingly clear that Obama and many of his closest aides were helping along a Hillary Clinton succession.
But numerous administration veterans, including loyalists to both Obama and Biden, remember it differently: Obama had begun embracing Clinton as a possible successor years before Biden lost his son, while the vice president was laying the groundwork for his own campaign. To which Clinton gushed, “I think there’s a sense of understanding that, you know, sometimes doesn’t even take words because we have similar views.”
so did top Obama aides John Podesta and Jennifer Palmieri. Clinton’s campaign even began interviewing and picking off people from Biden’s office,“It certainly felt like Obama’s world was behind us,” said one former Clinton campaign aide. “It wasn’t just Plouffe, Palmieri and Benenson. From the beginning, a lot of key Obama aides came over and helped stand up our campaign.
Obama tried to remain above the fray, even as his closest staffers largely rallied around Clinton—which they likely would not have done if there was a chance he would support Biden. “I knew a number of the president’s former staffers, and even a few current ones, were putting a finger on the scale for Clinton,” Biden wrote.Obama ever expressed a preference between Clinton and Biden, Jarrett demurred, saying, “that’s a conversation you’ll have to have with him.
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