by Jeff Wilser
Wait, did Obama just throw some shade at Biden? That’s sure what it sounded like to Maureen Dowd, who wrote, “Joe is nothing if not loyal. And the president should return that quality, and not leave his lieutenant vulnerable to Odd Couple parodies.”
“Biden felt insulted,” reported Newsweek. “Through staffers, Obama apologized, protesting that he had meant no disrespect. But at one of their regularly scheduled weekly lunches, Biden directly raised the incident with the president. The veep said he was trying to be more disciplined about his own remarks, but he asked in return that the president refrain from making fun (and require his staff to do likewise). He made the point that even the impression that the president was dissing him was not only bad for Biden, but bad for the administration. The conversation cleared the air.”
Given the deep friendship we now associate with Biden and Obama, this feels like ancient history, but it’s sneakily instructive. Those early hiccups suggest that the Obama/Biden friendship was not inevitable, it was not always easy, and sometimes it wobbled. All relationships, even bromances, take work.
Before Biden had time to truly settle into his new residence at the Naval Observatory, Team Obama was tossed another curveball: swine flu. As the nation started to panic, Biden said on Today, “I would tell members of my family—and I have—I wouldn’t go anywhere in confined places now.” More panic. The travel industry blew a gasket. Once again Biden had gone off-script. Later that evening, Biden ran into Ziskend and threw an arm around him, staying upbeat, boosting morale. “Are we winning today?” he asked with that smile of his.
“I don’t know about today, sir,” Ziskend said a bit nervously.
A beat. “You’re right, we’re not,” Biden said.
It lightened the mood and gave Ziskend some perspective. “He was being funny, but he was also showing me that, well, he had had many days,” Ziskend says now. “He’d been doing this for thirty-six years. It’s a lesson to all the people who were running around like headless chickens—this is one day, and there were going to be many, many more days. When you’ve seen enough of these cycles, you know how it goes.” This type of mind-set, and a focus on the longer arc, is what helps Biden avoid getting flustered by minor gaffes, and pivot to the important work that lies ahead.
WISDOM OF JOE
There will be many more days.
Meanwhile, Biden had to figure out the answer to a very simple question: What does a vice president do, exactly? If you ask John Adams, it’s the “most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived.” In LBJ’s opinion, the office isn’t “worth a warm bucket of piss.” And if you’re Aaron Burr, well, maybe you shoot someone in a duel.
Biden understood that because the Constitution failed to provide a VP instruction manual, he would need to study the people who had come before him, analyze what worked and what didn’t, and then choose a model to follow. To help with his due diligence, he met in person with not just the Democrats (Al Gore and Walter Mondale), but also Dick Cheney and George H. W. Bush. He thought about the various VP archetypes:
DICK CHENEY: Biden considered him the most dangerous veep in the nation’s history, and on the campaign he had vowed to “restore the balance” of the vice president. Perhaps he met with Cheney to figure out what not to do, or as a courtesy, but this was (clearly) not his model.
DAN QUAYLE: Biden viewed Quayle as strictly an ideologue, and therefore not the right model. That said…“My favorite vice president is Dan Quayle,” Biden later said to his sister, Val. This threw her. Um, why? Because Quayle had installed a pool at the VP’s residence, and now Biden’s grandkids could use it to go swimming, and he could run around with squirt guns.
AL GORE: Gore tended to focus on a few key areas—government reorganization, technology, and obviously the environment. Biden was tempted by this, but he was concerned about getting stuck in just one or two boxes, unable to see the full picture.
WALTER MONDALE: Mondale was perhaps the dark horse, but Biden found him appealing. He thought about the historical parallels to Jimmy Carter, who came into office young, inexperienced, and with a veteran veep. Back in the ’70s, Mondale had written Carter a memo outlining how he could function as something of a general advisor, a do-it-all trusted confidant. “Mondale gave Biden a copy of the memo, and they met three times,” explains Witcover. “Biden, who thought similarly, concluded that this model was better suited to Obama’s needs and his own desires and skills. With Obama’s full agreement, Biden proceeded to organize his own vice presidency accordingly.”
From the jump, Biden thought of himself as the advisor-in-chief. “Every single solitary appointment he has made thus far, I have been in the room,” he said in December 2008. “The recommendations I have made in most cases, coincidentally, have been the recommendations that he’s picked. Not because I made them, but because we think a lot alike.” Biden quickly became a steady hand, a go-to guy whom Obama could dispatch to solve seemingly any problem: Joe, you do Iraq. Joe, you do the debt ceiling. Joe, you do the Stimulus tracking. The gaffes would melt into the background. Despite the caricatures, he would not be Uncle Joe, and while a few lovable, shoot-from-the-hip moments of candor would still bubble to the surface, they would not define his vice presidency. Instead he played many roles, and he played them well. Let’s look at each.
JOE THE AMBASSADOR
This role was a natural fit. Obama would send Biden to crisscross the globe, leveraging all those years on the world stage. Take Jerusalem. In 2010, Biden flew to Israel to give a speech in which he promised “absolute, total, unvarnished commitment to Israeli security.” So far so good! Then things got awkward when Israel announced—while Biden was there—that they would build 1,600 new settlements.
Shit. How to play this? He didn’t mince words (he never does). In public he blasted the move, charging that it “undermines the trust we need right now.” Then he took it up a notch. He and Jill were scheduled to have a double dinner-date with Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu and his wife, Sara. Biden showed up late, sending a clear signal.
He later pulled Netanyahu aside, and to underscore the point that Bibi should take a bigger step for peace—nothing small would do—he told the Israeli prime minister some old advice from his father: “There’s no sense dying on a small cross.” Was there awkward silence? A glare? As one pundit said, “Few American politicians would think it wise to invoke crucifixion in a conversation with the leader of the Jewish state,” but after Biden’s folksy dollop of wisdom…Netanyahu just laughed. “I have to tell you,” an Israeli ambassador said at the time, “it is the single most succinct understanding of Israeli political reality of any other statement that I’ve heard.”
Herbie Ziskend was there for this now-legendary interaction. “He had known Netanyahu for decades. I don’t know how that scenario would have played out if he had been, like, a one-term governor and had never met Netanyahu,” says Ziskend. “But it was like two old friends reconnecting. Again, it speaks to just the importance of those long-term relationships.”
Biden’s secret to diplomacy? It comes down to authenticity, which sometimes requires you to go off-script, to ditch the canned rhetoric. Biden would roll his eyes at the “official” talking points. “They’ll give me a line and I’ll say, ‘I’m not gonna say that! That’s simply not believable!’ ” he said in 2014. “It’s really very important, if you are able, to communicate to the other guy that you understand his problem. And some of this diplomatic bullshit communicates, ‘We have no idea of your problem.’ ”
Thanks to all of Biden’s strong relationships, he would soon be tapped for missions in Ukraine, Japan, Korea, Colombia. “This personal element is, perhaps, why Biden is regularly handed the lemons in the foreign-policy sphere—the tough, unglamorous cases, the ones that have to be worked for a long time,” suggests The Atlantic’s Steve Clemons. “There are leaders Obama never really warmed up to. Biden tends these relationships.”
And as we saw with Milošević, the war criminal, sometim
es diplomacy takes some tough love. In 2011, Biden met with Vladimir Putin in his Kremlin office. Putin, proud of the handsome furniture and decorations, turned to Biden and said through an interpreter, “It’s amazing what capitalism will do, won’t it? A magnificent office!”
Biden moved close to Vlad, close, closer, closer—so close that the two men could almost kiss—and said, “Mr. Prime Minister, I’m looking into your eyes, and I don’t think you have a soul.”
Putin looked back at him. Smiled. “We understand one another.”
JOE THE POT-STIRRER
Biden likes to ask the tough questions. Challenge assumptions. So when Obama was faced with the most agonizing choices of his presidency—like whether to boost the number of troops in Afghanistan—Biden unleashed his inner interrogator, just like he did when chairing the Bork proceedings.
Quick recap: As the war in Afghanistan slid into mayhem, the generals requested 50,000 more troops. Obama refused to make a snap decision. (Too many wars, in Obama’s mind, were launched by snap decisions.) So the president demanded more data, more options, more intel, determined to undergo a rigorous review. Obama and the generals had meeting after meeting.
Biden was the chief skeptic, pressing the generals and pushing for clarity.
“In the midst of that debate, Joe and I would have lengthy one-on-one conversations, trying to tease out what, precisely, are our interests in Afghanistan, what exactly can we achieve there,” Obama explained to The New Yorker’s Evan Osnos. “There were times where Joe would ask questions, essentially on my behalf, to give me decision-making space, to help stir up a vigorous debate.”
In one meeting in the Situation Room, as Newsweek reported, Biden interjected with a question. “Can I just clarify a factual point? How much will we spend this year on Afghanistan?”
$65 billion.
“And how much will we spend on Pakistan?”
$2.25 billion.
“Well, by my calculations that’s a thirty-to-one ratio in favor of Afghanistan,” Biden continued. “So I have a question. Al Qaeda is almost all in Pakistan, and Pakistan has nuclear weapons. And yet for every dollar we’re spending in Pakistan, we’re spending thirty dollars in Afghanistan. Does that make strategic sense?”
Silence. “But the questions had their desired effect,” reported Newsweek’s Holly Bailey. “Those gathered began putting more thought into Pakistan as the key theater in the region.”
Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, health care, budget reconciliation deals—Biden was always there, always stirring the pot. “Joe is very good about sometimes articulating what’s on other people’s minds, or things that they’ve said in private conversations that people have been less willing to say in public,” said Obama. “Joe’s not afraid to tell me what he thinks. And that’s exactly what I need, and exactly what I want.”
WISDOM OF JOE
Have the guts to ask the tough questions.
And let’s not forget another pot that he stirred. On May 6, 2012, on Meet the Press, David Gregory asked Biden if his views on gay marriage had evolved.
Biden spoke slowly, quietly, earnestly. “This is all about…a simple proposition,” he said, hands clasped. “Who do you love? Who do you love, and will you be loyal to the person you love? And that’s what people are finding out is what all marriages at their root are about. Whether they are marriages of lesbians or gay men or heterosexuals.”
Gregory wanted to clarify. “And you’re comfortable with same-sex marriage now?”
“I am absolutely comfortable with the fact that men marrying men, women marrying women, and heterosexual men and women marrying one another, are entitled to the same exact rights,” Biden said. “All the civil rights, all the civil liberties. And quite frankly, I don’t see much of a distinction beyond that.”
Whether he had intended to or not, Joe Biden had just made history, and we all know what happened next. This is “accidental wisdom” at its finest.
BIDEN AND MEMES
Historians can debate whether Joe Biden is the greatest or most influential vice president ever, but there is no question he is the meme-iest VP in American history.
Some highlights:
JOE: I hid all the pens from Trump.
OBAMA: Why?
JOE: Because he bringing his own.
OBAMA: ???
JOE: HE’S BRINGING HIS OWN PENCE.
JOE: I’m going to ask Donald if he wants something to eat.
BARACK: That’s nice, Joe.
JOE: And then I’m going to offer him knuckle sandwiches.
OBAMA: Any good ideas on how to defeat ISIS?
*Biden raises hand*
OBAMA: Besides assembling the Avengers?
*Biden lowers hand*
Before Trump’s inauguration, one meme had Obama on the phone with a caption: “I know Joe called and ordered 500 pizzas to be delivered on January 21st, but I need you to cancel that order.”
Or another, with a pic of the two of them grinning, partners in crime:
BIDEN: C’mon you gotta print a fake birth certificate, put it in an envelope labeled “SECRET,” and leave it in the oval office desk.
OBAMA: Joe.
Biden has seen the memes, and he likes them. When his daughter, Ashley, introduced him to the bromance memes, she says that “he sat there for an hour and laughed.” He even has a favorite. A photo shows Obama and Joe in an embrace, about to hug, and looking into each other’s eyes:
“See? Doesn’t this feel right?”
“Joe I’m not leaving my wife for you.”
“You said we’d be together forev—”
“8 years. I said 8 years.”
JOE THE DEAL-MAKER
In 2009, the Democrats controlled fifty-nine seats in the Senate. That wasn’t enough to muscle through the Affordable Care Act, where they would need sixty to break a filibuster.
Yet they had a surprising card to play. Senator Arlen Specter, from Pennsylvania, had been a Republican since 1965. Yet guess who he knew from years of commuting on the Amtrak? He and Biden were close. When Joe sensed that his friend was wavering, he met with Specter six times in person and called him an additional eight times, urging him to switch teams and join the Democrats. The courtship paid off. (Quick refresher: Back in 1991, then-Republican Arlen Specter had a cameo in the Clarence Thomas hearings, acting as Anita Hill’s interrogator. Biden knows that yesterday’s opponent can be today’s ally….)
When Specter hopped across the aisle, the Democrats now had exactly sixty senators. Without Biden’s charm campaign, would the ACA have passed? Obviously the future of health care will be debated for years and decades, but the one thing we know is that, as Biden said the day it passed—while miked-up for all the world to hear—“This is a big fucking deal.”
And when Republicans threatened to not raise the debt ceiling, which suddenly risked an economic meltdown, Biden got on the phone with his old frenemy Mitch McConnell. As a Reuters headline put it, Biden was seen as the “last hope” for the negotiations. He huddled up with a gang of his old colleagues, Democrats and Republicans. A deal didn’t happen overnight. Some Republicans left the table, then came back. They had a second session, a third session. The nightmare stretched for months. And when a compromise was finally secured, Obama and John Boehner would announce the deal and get all the credit, but “it was Biden’s close working relationship with McConnell that broke the months-long logjam,” according to Politico.
As McConnell later said, “We got results that would not have been possible without a negotiating partner like Joe Biden. Obviously, I don’t always agree with him, but I do trust him.” This might be why Biden has another nickname: “The McConnell Whisperer.”
JOE THE COMEDIAN
The Gridiron Club is one of the oldest organizations of journalists. Every year, the president is invited to a comedy roast of the Who’s Who in media—basically a JV version of the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. Politicians are expected to tell jokes. One year Obama play
ed hooky at Camp David, and asked Biden to pinch-hit.
Biden’s eyes must have gone wide. Finally he gets to say whatever the hell he wants, with no penalty! It’s supposed to be funny! Some of his stand-up bits:
“Axelrod really wanted me to do this on teleprompter, but I told him I’m much better when I wing it,” he began. “I know these evenings run long, so I’m going to be brief—talk about the audacity of hope.”
“President Obama does send his greetings, though. He can’t be here tonight because he’s busy getting ready for Easter. He thinks it’s about him.”
“I understand these are dark days for the newspaper business, but I hate it when people say newspapers are obsolete. That’s totally untrue. I know from firsthand experience. I recently got a puppy, and you can’t housebreak a puppy on the Internet.”
“I never realized just how much power Dick Cheney had, until my first day on the job. I walked into my office…I opened my drawer, and Dick Cheney had left me Barack Obama’s birth certificate!”
This was Biden trying to be funny. As we all know, he does his best work when the comedy is unintentional. Like when he visited Harvard and met the vice president of the student body, and said off the cuff, grinning, “Isn’t it a bitch, this vice president thing?”
Or the time when he introduced an elderly couple, commenting, “There’s an old Irish saying, that says, may the hinges of your friendship never go rusty.” Biden said to the crowd, “Well, with these two folks, there’s no doubt about them staying oiled and lubricated.” He heard the crowd laugh and groan, and then cracked a large grin, suddenly realizing what he had just implied. “Now, for you who are not Irish…‘lubricated’ has a different meaning for us Irish.”
Biden seemed to have a special fondness for Irish gaffes. Take the time he introduced the prime minister of Ireland. Likely thrilled to get back in touch with his Celtic roots, Biden told reporters, with the prime minister right beside him, “His mom lived in Long Island for ten years or so. God rest her soul.”