The Long Alliance, page 29
Clinton, meanwhile, was sifting through tea leaves. She grew outright concerned that Biden would get in and make fundraising difficult for her over the summer, when Sanders started beating her in some New Hampshire polls, and she tried flexing her political muscle after another poll had Biden theoretically doing better than she did against some Republican primary candidates. Around the time of the DNC meeting, she had Jake Sullivan, a former Biden national security advisor now on her team, reassure donors, and she touted her support from Vilsack, Biden’s cabinet companion and longtime buddy. The main concern wasn’t that Biden would necessarily win. Instead, Clinton’s internal polling in early-voting states like Iowa showed that he might split the mainstream Democratic vote and widen Sanders’s path to the nomination. This was the majority view in Clinton’s campaign brain trust, but not the only one. Some advisors who’d worked with Biden reminded her that he’d been incapable of running a disciplined campaign organization in 1987 or 2007, so thought there was no reason to think 2015 would be any different. When the super PAC that Clinton inherited from Obama surveyed Americans about Democratic leaders to gauge their political standing, they asked about both Clintons, Sanders, and Obama. Biden wasn’t even on the list.
Biden didn’t so much reject the Obama analysis that had been filtered through Plouffe and Axelrod, or Clinton’s inconsistent hand-wringing, as let it bounce off him. He was inching forward, but what kept dragging him back was his emotional disintegration, not the threat of political demolition. He was aghast in early October when Politico reported that he himself was the source for an August New York Times column by Maureen Dowd—ironically the writer who effectively ended his 1987 campaign by exposing the first plagiarism case—revealing that Beau had urged Biden to run, “arguing that the White House should not revert to the Clintons and that the country would be better off with Biden values.” Biden couldn’t abide what he believed to be the implication that he was using his son’s death to set off this latest and most intense round of interest in his potential campaign. So when the pro-Biden group encouraging him to run independently announced plans the next day to place a new ad nationwide invoking the 1972 car accident that killed his wife and daughter, it was a bridge too far for him, and he called for its removal from the air.
Some of Biden’s former colleagues found him shaken when he rang to take their temperature. Chuck Hagel had visited Biden at the Naval Observatory while Beau was still sick, and he told the VP that it didn’t seem like he was up to it. Now they spoke again, and while Hagel’s message hadn’t changed, Biden still said he thought he’d be letting Beau down if he didn’t run. But he acknowledged the significant challenges that would come with running against Clinton and, when he spoke with Leon Panetta, said he didn’t want to stand in the way of the first woman president. Others tried bucking him up. He was buoyed when Harold Schaitberger’s International Association of Fire Fighters abandoned its planned Clinton endorsement until Biden made a decision, and Bob Kerrey, a former Senate colleague and ex-candidate himself, urged him to run on competency grounds. Bill Bradley bugged him every few days to convince him, and Chris Dodd, Tom Daschle, and Max Baucus all weighed in positively, too. New York governor Andrew Cuomo—who Biden said reminded him of Beau—told him he should consider running, no matter that Cuomo was publicly endorsing Clinton, and after his Colbert appearance even George Clooney got in touch with Ricchetti to offer his help.
But history was repeating itself as October stretched. As Richard Ben Cramer wrote of the senator’s agonizing in 1987, “Joe still couldn’t say if he was running. That’s all anyone would ask him, for months.” Yet again, potential campaign hires took other jobs, no longer willing to wait. Still, résumés piled up in Schultz’s and Bedingfield’s inboxes as the possibility lingered. Biden himself vacillated, sometimes by the day, sometimes wildly enough to scare off natural allies. After talking about the campaign with strategist Larry Grisolano, a longtime Biden fan who’d often told the Obama brain trust they needed to be more middle-class-focused during his tenure on the top rungs of the messaging team in 2008 and 2012, Biden got so excited that he started telling friends in Iowa that Grisolano—whose name he sometimes butchered—would run his campaign. This was news to Grisolano. He’d already talked about Biden with his old business partner Axelrod, and decided he wouldn’t join up.
Internal deadlines set by Ricchetti, Schultz, and Dunn slipped, and Biden’s fretting grew more profound. In mid-October, with the external speculation and internal questions threatening to overwhelm Biden even more, Kaufman sent an email to a loose network of Biden office and campaign alums. “A lot of you are being asked, and have asked me, about the direction and timing of the Vice President’s thinking about a run for President. On the second question—timing—I can’t add much, except I am confident that the Vice President is aware of the practical demands of making a final decision soon,” he wrote, trying to calm everyone down. But, he added, “I think it’s fair to say, knowing him as we all do, that it won’t be a scripted affair—after all, it’s Joe.”
* * *
Clinton ran circles around her opponents on the Las Vegas debate stage on October 13. Biden watched closely, just eight days after he’d brought his usual crowd together for what was supposed to be the final judgment call meeting. It wasn’t, but it had reinforced to him that he wasn’t just running out of time politically, but practically, too. If he wanted to be on the ballot in some states, he needed to declare his candidacy in a matter of days. The debate calmed nerves at Clinton’s Brooklyn HQ and among the sizable group of ex–Obama donors who’d pledged their checkbooks to her but still felt bad about ditching Biden.
Now Biden relented and finally agreed to ring potential fundraisers and staffers—Donilon, Ricchetti, Schultz, and Schrum having convinced him that it was now or never. His weekday evenings filled up with the calls, most of which were discouraging, with just three months until voting started. He called the West Coast Obama donor he’d seen a few weeks earlier, told him he would decide in the next few days, and asked: “What do you think now?” The fundraiser replied that he still loved Biden but that he’d said he had only a 25 percent chance when they’d met two months earlier, and the VP had missed the deadline they’d discussed. He had 10 percent odds now, at best, and only if he could answer basic questions like: Who’s the team? What’s the fundraising plan? The external signs weren’t much better. Biden took it hard when Jim Clyburn, the powerful South Carolina congressman with huge influence among Black voters there, said in an interview on Monday, October 19, that he shouldn’t run.
By Tuesday morning, Biden was reading drafts of the announcement speech Donilon had scripted for him, finally acknowledging that it was decision time—for real now—and fretting about how he’d let this go on for so long. Either way, he decided, he’d make an announcement on Wednesday, October 21. The moment had him thinking expansively, reflecting on his tenure alongside Obama, and he let it show when he appeared alongside Mondale that afternoon across town. He spoke glowingly of his boss, reminding the crowd just how much time they spent together. Praising Mondale’s guidance and example, he said he and Obama never differed ideologically, and were “simpatico” on every major issue. “A vice president is totally a reflection of the president,” he said. “There is no inherent power—none, zero—and it completely, totally depends on your relationship with the president.”
Biden wasn’t just being romantic for the crowd, which included Jimmy Carter and a range of powerful liberals. Obama was still popular among Democrats, and the race was clearly at the top of his mind. Clinton had recently raised eyebrows by lumping “the Republicans” in with the National Rifle Association, health insurance companies, drug corporations, and the Iranian government when asked about her enemies, and now Biden appeared to disagree, though he didn’t mention her by name. “It is possible, it is necessary, to end this notion that the enemy is the other party,” he said. “End this notion that it is naive to think we can speak well of the other party and cooperation. What is naive is to think it is remotely possible to govern this country unless we can—that is what is naive.” He also offered an alternate history of the well-known deliberations over the bin Laden raid four years earlier, in which he’d famously been skeptical while Clinton had urged action. “We walked out of the room and walked upstairs,” Biden now said of Obama. “I told him my opinion: I thought he should go, but to follow his own instincts.”
These pointed statements were confusing—or galling—enough to cause a stir online, but when Biden got back to the Naval Observatory after the event, his tears returned as he gathered his closest confidants for one last conversation about his choice. They went back and forth, agonizing over the timeline and the same old concerns over whether it made any sense. They only adjourned when Donilon, for the first time, looked at Biden and said it wasn’t right for him now. Biden retreated to his study to look over the speech with a pen and to, somehow, weigh his final considerations.
Alone with his thoughts, facing either one last excruciating campaign or the effective end of his five-decade political career, he did what he always did when the pressure was on. He called friends. He called family. He waited for the answer to hit him. He made a call to Tony Blinken, his longtime foreign policy aide who was now the deputy secretary of state, and another to Ben Harris, his economic advisor, to fact-check parts of the announcement speech he was still thinking about giving. One person he couldn’t call was the one whose political advice he would have wanted most for the majority of their decade-long relationship to that point. Obama was maybe the last person he could talk to now.
Around 11:30 p.m. he called James Smith, a Columbia, South Carolina, lawmaker and veteran in his late forties who reminded him of Beau. He tried out his pitch on Smith, who’d always been a big supporter. He thought the nation was unsettled, he said, and that he’d have to focus on appealing to Rust Belt voters, especially since Clinton seemed too cocky about winning them. Smith was encouraging, and Biden decided to read out the latest draft of the speech. He went populist, describing inequality in Scranton and other places like it, and he bragged that he was known as “Middle Class Joe.” He praised Obama’s leadership in a time of crisis and touted “the Obama legacy,” then riffed about unifying a nation torn apart by partisanship during those same years, about the importance of devotion to country, and about being an American president—not a Democratic one or a Republican one, an apparent allusion to Obama’s 2004 convention speech about red and blue states. And, in a nod to Beau, he talked about funding cancer research. Smith was in tears and told him: “Dammit, Joe, you have to run.” When Biden didn’t immediately reply, Smith briefly panicked. (Oh no, I just said ‘dammit’ to the vice president!) Biden then spoke up, softly, as midnight neared. “Well, James, I’m going to sleep on it.”
Biden brought Ricchetti, Donilon, and Bedingfield to the Naval Observatory early the next morning to tell them he wasn’t running. He called Obama, who offered to stand with him at the announcement if he wanted, and agreed to let Biden use the White House Rose Garden, as long as his staff OK’d the use of the official space for a political event.
When Biden then got to the White House, Obama helped wrestle the launch speech into another kind of announcement. He then walked out one step behind Joe and Jill, who approached the lectern hand in hand. At the microphones Biden first thanked Obama for letting him use the Rose Garden, then immediately turned to what had taken so long. “As my family and I have worked through the grieving process, I said all along what I’ve said time and again to others: that it may very well be that that process, by the time we get through it, closes the window on mounting a realistic campaign for president. That it might close. I’ve concluded it has closed.” Obama closed his eyes, which had been glued to Biden.
It was, with only a few tweaks, the speech Biden would’ve given if he were running.
CHAPTER 14
2016
Obama seldom enjoyed his interactions with the Beltway press corps, whom he by and large regarded as shallow, irresponsible, and easily distracted compared to their investigative and policy-minded counterparts. He did at least sometimes see the upside of the annual black-tie White House Correspondents’ Association dinner. Held every spring, it was a celebration of a lot of what was wrong with the decadent DC culture but also a lighthearted chance to be blunt about messages he was trying to get across tactfully the rest of the year. His speeches were always biting, and usually a pretty good reflection of how he actually felt.
In 2015, he had devoted a chunk of his address to the contenders for the Republican presidential nomination. He rolled his eyes at Bush family scion Jeb, mocked right-winger Ted Cruz, and scoffed at hardline social conservative Rick Santorum. He then said, “And Donald Trump is here. Still,” to waves of knowing laughter across the Washington Hilton ballroom. That wasn’t his first time needling Trump at one of these dinners. Some believed Obama’s 2011 ridicule amid Trump’s birtherism crusade inspired the reality TV personality to seriously consider presidential politics in the first place. By the end of April 2016, though, Trump was on the verge of becoming the GOP’s nominee, and Obama could no longer get away with essentially ignoring him, which he’d been doing for a year and had previously thought was the best way to handle a candidate he considered little more than a laughable carnival barker and an unqualified, corrupt idiot.
Now, Obama displayed his impatience with a press he saw as complicit in Trump’s rise, but mostly his contempt for Trump and his feckless party. Most importantly, he made sure everyone understood that he refused to take Trump or his threat seriously.
“The Republican establishment is incredulous that he is their most likely nominee—incredulous, shocking. They say Donald lacks the foreign policy experience to be president. But, in fairness, he has spent years meeting with leaders from around the world: Miss Sweden, Miss Argentina, Miss Azerbaijan,” Obama said. He continued with a joke about Trump’s business chops, then said to the gathered journalists in his most floridly sarcastic voice, “Alright, that’s probably enough. I mean, I’ve got more material—no, no, I don’t want to spend too much time on The Donald. Following your lead, I want to show some restraint. Because I think we can all agree that from the start, he’s gotten the appropriate amount of coverage, befitting the seriousness of his candidacy. I hope you all are proud of yourselves—the guy wanted to give his hotel business a boost, and now we’re praying that Cleveland makes it through July.”
This was basically how Obama talked privately about Trump, too, though his incredulity that Republicans would actually vote for him shifted that spring to confident dismissal of the notion that Americans writ large would seriously consider him in November. Biden was never quite so glib, but among aides and with his boss, he gave no indication of taking Trump terribly seriously either in 2015 or early 2016. When he did talk about Trump, it was to shake his head at his racist provocations, or to shrug that at least now Americans had no choice but to confront uglier parts of their past.
As far as the pair saw it at that point, there wasn’t much reason to think harder about the topic. Biden talked a lot about economic dislocation, but surely that couldn’t explain this. Obama, meanwhile, viewed it as an outlier that the Republican standard-bearer, Sanders, and now Clinton were all opposing his trade regime. If Trump’s ascension was about anything, it was about a new strain of right-wing lunacy engulfing the GOP. He would clearly be remembered as an even more outrageous Barry Goldwater when this was all said and done, a blip on the way to President Hillary Clinton’s inauguration in 2017.
* * *
The Bidens skipped their usual Nantucket Thanksgiving in 2015, opting instead for Rome to distance themselves from memories of the previous year’s final trip with Beau. Joe took the occasion for reflection unusually seriously. In Italy and then back in Washington he began mapping out what he hoped would still be an influential role for himself in his last year in office with Obama. He had plenty of goodwill to work with, not just because of his generally positive image and sympathy after the last six months but also because of the implicit comparison with Obama—who was beloved by Democrats but widely regarded by the political class as overly polarizing, even though his approval rating was in the low- to mid-forties, as it often was—and Clinton, who was increasingly seen through a hyperpartisan lens.
Biden identified two openings for himself. First, if the battle for the future of his party wouldn’t include him as it grew increasingly ferocious, maybe he could help find a common, hopeful thread to bring the warring liberals, centrists, and progressives together in pursuit of more economic opportunity. He thought they needed a grave reminder that they couldn’t take for granted their appeal to people of color and that they were dooming themselves if they gave up on working-class white men. He also wanted to make sure they knew this was no time to swing hard to the socialist left. Second, after hosting Chinese president Xi Jinping in September, he was thinking plenty about China’s global influence and—combined with rejuvenated right-wing populism and isolationism in Europe and Trump’s stubbornness at the top of the GOP field—the importance of straightforwardly defending democratic principles that suddenly seemed up for reconsideration. If anyone could credibly tell Western economic leaders they needed to understand the disconnect between their rhetoric and their constituents, he figured, it might be him.
