The Long Alliance, page 24
Anticipating a fiery evening, Sheehan replied, “You really have to set in your head: Where’s the line you really don’t want to go over?”
Klain cut in before Biden could respond. “I’ll make it easy,” he told the vice president. “There is no line.”
This kind of macho bluster might have been mildly embarrassing for a different kind of pol—for Obama, say. But Biden loved it and had been feeding off it for weeks. When he got onstage with Ryan, who’d been getting coverage for his obsessive workouts, Biden’s first thought was, I could physically take this guy. And once the debate began, he followed the plan precisely, not necessarily scoring every possible point in favor of the Democratic administration but disrupting Ryan so readily and grinning so widely that he made his opponent look frustrated and overwhelmed off the bat.
Republicans couldn’t believe what they were seeing—Biden was acting like a clown, wasn’t he? It wasn’t abundantly obvious that voters much liked it, either, though they certainly had no reason to fall for Ryan in his grand introduction to the national stage after Biden dismissed him as ridiculous for an hour and a half, on everything from Iran sanctions policy to his deployment of unemployment statistics.
The reaction in Chicago was almost unanimous delight, and Obama, who watched on Air Force One on the way back to DC after a day of campaigning in Florida, exhaled. None of them thought their campaign had stumbled irredeemably off track in Denver, but they all knew Obama had fallen down on the job and that the national story had needed to change, ASAP, to cut Romney’s momentum off at its ankles.
Obama picked up his phone after Biden left the stage.
He felt a new kind of gratitude for his partner, like Biden had stepped up to fix his mistake. He told him that, thanked him, and revealed that Biden had given him some things to consider that night. Biden had reset Obama’s way of thinking about the rest of his showdowns with Romney, the president said. He now saw that he could stop treating this all like a legal proceeding, and more like a campaign. And he knew how to campaign.
PART II
2012–2021
CHAPTER 11
2012–2013
The reelection, Obama suspected, had finally done it. Fresh off a victory that plenty of people around him believed was more consequential than his first for arguing—proving—that the election of the first Black commander in chief amid an economic catastrophe was no fluke, Obama called a cabinet meeting. He put aside the printed script he was handed and, looking out at his team, he riffed, predicting that they were entering a new era. If 2012 had shown anything it was that the politics of obstruction had failed, he said, and that there was little market for pure partisanship out in the real world, where Americans wanted to see Washington tackle big issues. He continued: as the appetite for gridlock was now on the wane, it was time for his cabinet to seize the opportunity to think big. The election was a referendum on thinking big, wasn’t it?
Obama knew this was easier said than done, of course, especially since Republicans still controlled the House. But he thought there was reason to believe they might be open to new compromise on immigration policy, for one thing. Romney’s loss had appeared to expose them as an aging party of white men in desperate need of change to stop a full-on descent into outright xenophobia and therefore permanent minority status in a quickly diversifying country. He knew that plenty of his advisors were skeptical of the GOP’s ability or willingness to budge, but even hyperconservative screamers like Fox News host Sean Hannity had exited the Romney experience telling their radio audiences they’d “evolved” on immigration, arguing for a “pathway to citizenship” for undocumented migrants to “get rid of the immigration issue altogether” for their party.
Obama thought John Boehner, the leader of the Republican-majority House, who reminded him a bit of the kind of transactional old-school GOP pols he knew back in Springfield, could wrangle his more obstructionist members—who’d presumably been chastened by Obama’s reelection—into a more collaborative posture. At least he could shut them up while more reasonable moderates and conservatives retook control on the important stuff. Earlier that year Obama had told donors in Minneapolis that he thought “if we’re successful in this election—when we’re successful in this election—that the fever may break, because there’s a tradition in the Republican Party of more common sense than that. My hope, my expectation, is that after the election, now that it turns out that the goal of beating Obama doesn’t make much sense because I’m not running again, that we can start getting some cooperation again.”
First things first, though. He couldn’t look ahead to his second term until they finally resolved the so-called fiscal cliff, an ugly combination of painful slashes to government programs and tax increases that would automatically go into effect at the end of the year in just a few weeks without an agreement on Capitol Hill over spending and taxation policy. No one was particularly optimistic that it would be an easy negotiation after years of depressing budgetary brinkmanship, but perhaps they could wrap it up in time to have a normal holiday season, maybe even showcasing early signs of a healing working relationship among party leaders. It would be a good chance, too, for Obama to demonstrate that he was still willing to hit the negotiating table—a role at this point more widely associated with Biden, who was always sure he could find common ground with GOP leaders he’d known for years. Obama preferred to articulate broad values than to talk numbers with Boehner or Mitch McConnell, but he wasn’t willing to step back entirely and let Biden take the lead now, especially with the memory of the previous summer’s debt ceiling debacle—the low point of the Obama-Biden first term, if you asked the president—still sharp. Maybe things really were different now.
At least that was the hope before mid-December, before the period everyone in the White House would come to remember as the nadir of their entire eight years in office. The time when there was no longer any doubting that while Obama’s capacity to ignite public passion and Biden’s dexterity within Washington could combine to great effect, they were not always enough to overcome the capital’s structural impediments—especially against an opposition party with no political incentive to budge.
* * *
The first reports were so horrific on that quiet, gray Friday that the White House staff waited for a minute, hoping the Associated Press would issue a correction—say it wasn’t true—before someone had to inform Obama of what was happening in Connecticut. When he did learn from his counterterrorism advisor John Brennan about the monstrous school shooting that had killed over two dozen people, including twenty six- and seven-year-olds, he went dark and looked like he’d been sucker-punched in the stomach, thinking, as he said later that day through tears, trying not to let his voice break, “not as a president but as anybody else would, as a parent.” It was the only time he ever requested that Michelle join him in the Oval in the middle of a workday, and even when she got there, there wasn’t much to do but hug silently.
Biden usually handled tragedy differently, always immediately asking who he could talk to, who he could connect with, when he could go to the scene to help. This time he watched, feeling just as helpless as everyone else, as Obama briefly addressed the nation and offered little solace but, they both hoped, a reminder of shared humanity. He also made clear that he wanted to be involved in the broader, more lasting response, and within the week Obama tasked him with quickly compiling a roster of concrete proposals for reducing gun violence, an assignment both of them considered to be significant.
It was a good fit for Biden, who not only had a profound understanding of what parts of the government could do what, but who had also himself contributed to the formulation of the assault weapons ban in 1994, and whose chief of staff Bruce Reed had been working on suing gun manufacturers in various capacities since the Columbine shooting in 1999. The work would, necessarily, be split in two: as they considered how to expand universal background checks, create national databases for firearms, and implement mental health checks for gun buyers, they would both outline an aggressive suite of executive actions the administration could undertake immediately and identify legislative proposals to champion. Within Biden’s office there were few illusions that the latter part of the task would be easy, since they would need sixty Senate votes to pass anything, which meant winning over some Republicans who saw gun control as anathema to their political identities and had little interest in crossing the firearms lobby. And that was before you even considered the GOP-led House. But, Biden advisors were often quick to point out internally, polling unanimously showed that the country had been moving in their direction dramatically on gun matters, no matter what the National Rifle Association said. There was obvious momentum for pushing the boundaries out on background checks, they believed, and previous country-rattling school shootings like Columbine and at Virginia Tech in 2007 had both given way to some policy changes.
There was, in fact, even more appetite within Obama’s government for aggressive action than the president appreciated. Shortly after Obama asked Biden to take the lead, Education secretary Arne Duncan, Attorney General Eric Holder, and Homeland Security secretary Janet Napolitano quietly approached the VP to encourage him to propose aggressive, quick action through the agencies, since they were getting frustrated with the administration’s lack of progress. Biden didn’t need the push from the cabinet—he couldn’t stop thinking about his wrenching conversations with families whose children had been killed, and he saw the executive actions side of his mandate as paramount. This was where he could make sure the existing background check system was hardened, for one thing.
Still, he resolved to be methodical about his approach, and he sat for meetings with not just victims of gun violence, their families, and progun control groups, but also the NRA and police chiefs, aiming to find loopholes to exploit and points of agreement to rely on. And then, when it came time to start selling the country on the plans he handed Obama in January, he returned to that territory, not just sitting for friendly glossy magazine interviews but also with sportsman publications where he could argue for the proposals to skeptical audiences. The administration, however, was mostly moving alone at that point. Obama announced that he would back legislation to implement universal background checks for purchasers, to ban assault weapons again, to prohibit high-capacity magazines, and to further restrict arms trafficking, but Harry Reid had already told him that while he wouldn’t stand in the White House’s way, he wanted Obama and Biden to push quickly, since he knew from previous experience that the NRA’s grip over Republicans was ironclad. He would help try to win over some Democratic skeptics but he wouldn’t use all of his own political capital or time on this effort, fearing it wouldn’t go anywhere.
It didn’t take long for everyone involved to conclude that the only conceivable path in the Senate was through Joe Manchin, the self-serious conservative West Virginia Democrat who liked shooting things in his campaign ads back home and working with Republicans in DC. He stood the only chance of possibly winning some GOP votes for a handful of reforms, even if that meant starting from a considerably less aggressive place than Obama or Biden preferred. Manchin was open to regulating military-style weapons, though, and it helped that though Manchin and Biden didn’t always see eye to eye, they liked each other. In fact, Biden was the only person in the White House Manchin would even talk to, considering his cold relationship with Obama, whom he saw as too liberal on energy issues—years later the coal-state senator still wouldn’t reveal who he voted for in 2012’s presidential race—and early in 2013 Manchin told Biden that he’d be putting out a framework for legislation to impose background checks on purchases at gun shows and online, soon to be joined by Pennsylvania Republican Pat Toomey. In order for it to have any hope of passing with some GOP votes, Manchin told Biden, the VP couldn’t let the White House endorse it.
If ever there was a chance for Biden to concentrate on wielding his Senate skills for the administration’s benefit, this was it, he figured—an opportunity to shepherd something big into reality in front of a country paying close attention. He agreed with Manchin and persuaded Obama to step back, and then got to work trying to soothe the considerable fears of red-state Democrats like Baucus, North Dakota’s Heidi Heitkamp, Alaska’s Mark Begich, and Arkansas’s Mark Pryor, at Manchin’s request. He talked Manchin down, too, at one point convincing him to keep the provision mandating background checks for online sales in the bill despite Republican resistance, explaining that he still regretted leaving gun shows out of the 1994 crime bill’s background checks section and didn’t want to repeat the mistake.
But still, signs of genuine GOP openness to Manchin’s framework were few and far between, and Washington was getting antsy. Biden’s proposed executive orders were on their way to implementation, but January, February, and March slunk by without clarity on when Manchin-Toomey might get near the sixty supporters it needed to pass, each day making the political limbo even more untenable for conservative Democrats who were under mounting pressure back home to drop the reforms altogether.
Then, in mid-April, Reid drew the line. The Boston Marathon had been bombed two days earlier and the perpetrators were still at large, so attention was far from the Capitol. There appeared to be no end in sight for the gun debate after one Republican holdout, New Hampshire senator Kelly Ayotte, said she would join her party in rejecting the proposal, after all. Reid called over to the White House and said the debate had gone long enough—his caucus’s moderates were bleeding politically and he intended to put the measure on the Senate floor for a vote in a matter of days. Obama and Biden quickly convened their senior staff to work through any possible plan to get to sixty votes by then, before Reid called back. Actually, he said, the vote would be the next day. He’d had enough and couldn’t believe the White House couldn’t see that Republicans weren’t going along with them—on this, or on anything big.
Biden felt like the rug had been pulled out from under him—he was sure he just needed more time to win over his old colleagues. Obama went quiet, and then, within hours, as cynical as anyone could remember. Usually the president hid his anger or expressed it in sarcasm. Now, though, he seethed. Not at Reid, but at the political reality he could no longer avoid.
If a heart-shredding national tragedy—twenty little kids murdered—wasn’t going to jar the GOP into cooperation, they were never going to get serious and work with him on anything, were they? No, he concluded, in a wake-up call of his own. Nothing had changed, after all.
* * *
There had still been some hope back in December, especially since no one considered the fiscal cliff situation extraordinary at all after the preceding years’ series of budget-focused economic showdowns. Those felt more like dutiful drudgery than anything else, each party playing a predetermined role before an inevitable and painful last-second compromise. At 11:00 a.m. the morning after the reelect, then–White House chief of staff Jack Lew scheduled a conference call for the hungover senior staff: the president would be engaging with Boehner to find a solution to the impending cuts and tax increases, which would hopefully include sufficient spending reductions to mollify conservatives and robust enough extensions on middle-class tax relief paired with higher rates for the wealthy to keep liberals satisfied.
It didn’t yet feel terribly relevant that Reid was determined to play hardball and expose Republicans’ years of economic hostage-taking—they’d been forcing Obama’s Democrats into unfair compromises because of conservative hard-liners’ outsize influence on weak GOP leadership, and he wanted an end to the austerity regime—or that McConnell was unlikely to agree to higher taxes for high earners. And no one thought to dwell on the demands of Boehner’s loudest internal critics, right-wingers in his caucus who could tank any compromise he struck if they didn’t think it was harsh enough.
It wasn’t until ten days before the deadline that Boehner backed away from the negotiations, succumbing to the reality that his Tea Partiers would refuse to vote for any tax increase, even one only for people who made $1 million or more—as their speaker had proposed in hopes of forcing an agreement with Obama, who’d backed a $250,000 threshold. That left the situation up to Reid to resolve, and in the Oval a week later Obama, unamused and tired of it all, said he’d rather walk away with no deal than sign a bad one.
It was hard to blame him for the impatience. In the first half of 2011 there’d been talk of a “Grand Bargain” between the parties ahead of a deadline to raise the government’s debt limit, and Plouffe had argued to everyone in the president’s orbit that reaching a bipartisan agreement could be a serious boon to their reelection campaign. But weeks of Biden-led behind-closed-doors talks with Republicans had soured, the White House increasingly certain the GOP negotiators were insisting on an unreasonable budget that, for example, went after Medicare too intensely. Obama’s own secret attempt to strike a deal with Boehner didn’t go much better. The debt ceiling—the limit for the Treasury’s borrowing—drew closer and Republicans started to make noise about threatening to let the government hit it if they didn’t agree on spending cuts. That would mean the first-ever US default on its debts, which was universally regarded as a calamitous outcome that could forever tarnish America’s place in the international economic system. So the outcry was significant when Boehner determined he couldn’t get his most militant members to go along with any tax increases at all, even though Obama kept tentatively agreeing to spending slashes that his own supporters would hate. The president had little choice but to kick most of these matters down the road and focus simply on trying to avoid default.
Biden felt betrayed by the Republicans and Obama was furious they were willing to gamble with the world economy for narrow partisan gain. Even after Democrats forced an agreement to raise the debt ceiling for a bit longer in exchange for serious spending cuts and the promise of more in the future if Congress didn’t come up with a deficit reduction plan, the feeling around Obama was that the GOP had crossed a dangerous line.
