Biden and Obama: a complicated bromance25 Mar 2024
When Joe Biden takes the stage with Barack Obama at an election fundraiser in New York this week, it will be all smiles for a duo who collectively have spent nearly a dozen years in the White House.
But while Biden, 81, will be glad to have the star power of Obama and also former Democratic president Bill Clinton at the event on Thursday, there will also be tensions with his former boss, whom he served as vice president for two terms.
Obama, 62, will be there to support Biden’s reelection. But he reportedly expressed concerns about Biden’s bid during two lunches in recent months, saying the campaign must do more to prevent a Donald Trump comeback in November.
The White House point blank denies any friction.
“They’re close. They’re like family. They speak regularly,” White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said.
But there’s no disputing an intriguing dynamic between the cool, cerebral Obama and the older, more folksy Biden who served as vice president to America’s first black commander-in-chief from 2009 to 2017.
The ambiguity in their relationship stems partly from the difficulty many vice presidents face in a poorly defined job whose main requirement is arguably just being on hand to replace the president in case the worst happens.
“Presidents and vice presidents from the very beginning have had a fraught relationship,” Thomas Whalen, associate professor of social sciences at Boston University, told AFP.
Any strains between Biden and Obama were in any case “small potatoes” compared to some previous mismatched pairings in the long history of US “veeps.”
These range from the odd couple of Dwight D. Eisenhower and Richard Nixon to Nixon, on becoming president, thinking his own VP Spiro Agnew was a “complete moron.” In the 2000 election, vice president Al Gore froze out Clinton during his tilt at the White House because of the scandal over Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky.
By contrast “I think there’s a respect there” between Obama and Biden, Whalen said.
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