While serving as former President Barack Obama‘s wingman, now-President Joe Biden couldn’t skirt his misgivings that the Obama “eggheads” viewed him as a foolish nuisance, a new book claims.
The deep bond and public bromance exhibited between the duo in public have become the stuff of comic book fodder, but behind the scenes, their rapport was rife with agitation and mistrust, according to the upcoming book The Long Alliance: The Imperfect Union of Joe Biden and Barack Obama, which is slated for release on Sept. 13.
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“The biggest insult to Biden was how little his input mattered to Obama’s inner circle,” the book claims, the Daily Mail reported. “Biden could hardly shake the suspicion that Obama’s eggheads saw him as a foolish distraction they couldn’t fully trust.”
Obama and Biden first crossed paths in the early 2000s. Initially, neither of the two men was particularly impressed with the other, according to The Long Alliance, which was written by New York Magazine national correspondent Gabriel Debenedetti.
Biden was “wary of fresh faces” and envious of the attention Obama generated but met with him at one point early in their professional relationship, the book says. He offered to grab dinner with him at a restaurant near the Capitol — “nothing fancy,” he said, per the book.
“We can go to a nice place, I can afford it,” Obama shot back, with the meeting ending on a “sour and uncomfortable note.”
Obama viewed Biden’s offer as “condescending at best, borderline offensive at worst” and thought of Biden as “old-school,” the book says.
“Joe Biden is a decent guy but man, that guy can just talk and talk. It’s an incredible thing to see,” Obama told his adviser David Axelrod, per the book.
During a confirmation hearing for secretary of state nominee Condoleezza Rice, Obama wrote a note to a staffer saying, “Shoot. Me. Now,” while Biden helped lead the Senate proceedings, the book said. The Obama-Biden kinship took another hit in 2007 when Biden hailed Obama as “the first mainstream African American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice looking guy” in an interview with the New York Observer.
Obama chose Biden to be his running mate for his 2008 presidential campaign out of pragmatism, according to the book, but Biden initially refused — as he recounted publicly. Ultimately, Obama managed to win Biden over by pledging to have a full partnership with him that would serve as the “capstone” rather than the “tombstone” of Biden’s career, the book adds.
Early on in the Obama administration, Biden loathed having to defend Obama’s positions with which he disagreed, but their relationship slowly began to ameliorate. Still, some trepidation remained. Fretting over Biden’s gaffes, at one point, Obama aides blocked Biden from taking press questions and huddling with voters at rope lines — relegating him to a teleprompter, per the book.
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Their relationship appeared to take another downturn when Obama considered replacing Biden as his running mate in 2012 with Hillary Clinton, the book continued. The Obama administration has previously denied that report. Relations also soured when Biden preempted Obama with his support for gay marriage, per the book.
During the 2016 campaign, Biden felt “personally stung” by Obama dubbing Clinton his “friend” who would be an “excellent president,” akin to an endorsement in Biden’s mind, according to the book.
“Am I not needed now,” Biden reportedly pondered at the time.
