After waiting months for former President Barack Obama’s endorsement, President-elect Joe Biden is now distancing himself from his old boss.
Biden poaching Obama administration national security and foreign policy personnel prompted concerns that Biden’s White House would be a third-term extension of the last Democratic one.
But Biden, Obama’s two-term vice president and Delaware’s 36-year senator, was adamant, during his first interview as the incoming commander in chief, that will not be the case.
“This is not a third Obama term because there’s — we face a totally different world than we faced in the Obama-Biden administration,” Biden told NBC Tuesday.
He argued President Trump’s foreign posture had upended the world stage.
“It’s become America first. It’s been America alone,” he said. “That’s why I found people who, who joined the administration in key points that represent the spectrum of the American people, as well as the spectrum of the Democratic Party.”
For Tom Cochran, a partner at public affairs firm 720 Strategies and an Obama State Department alumnus, Biden shouldn’t be so defensive regarding the attacks.
“What’s wrong with being an extension of the Obama foreign policy team? Don’t we want people with experience in high-profile positions? I would argue, ‘Yes, more than ever,'” he told the Washington Examiner.
Biden this week unveiled his national security and foreign policy team, heralding a return to technocratic governing.
His picks include longtime aides, such as Secretary of State-designate Tony Blinken and national security adviser appointee Jake Sullivan. They also include career officials, such as Department of Homeland Security Secretary-designate Alejandro Mayorkas, Director of National Intelligence nominee Avril Haines, and United Nations Ambassador-designate Linda Thomas-Greenfield. He even tapped former Senate colleague, 2004 Democratic standard-bearer, and ex-chief diplomat John Kerry as his top international climate change envoy.
But the comparison between his cast of characters and Obama’s seemed to play on his mind, referencing the similarities when he introduced them to the country.
During his announcement address, he promised they would “reimagine American foreign policy and national security for the next generation.” Yet, he tried to balance that approach with touting their records in their respective fields.
“While this team has unmatched experience and accomplishments, they also reflect the idea that we cannot meet these challenges with old thinking or unchanged habits,” he said in Wilmington, Delaware. “Experience and leadership. Fresh thinking and perspective. And, an unrelenting belief in the promise of America.”
Former Obama-era European Union Ambassador Anthony Gardner preemptively pushed back on the assumption during a post-election European University Institute appearance.
“This is not going to be Obama 3.0. No one is naive enough to believe that we can wind back the clock and that Donald Trump never existed, that Trumpism will go away, because, very much, Trumpism will be around,” he said.
“If we fail together with our allies, particularly with the EU, in moving forward on a number of areas,” Gardner added, “then I fear that we will be back to a more virulent form of demagogy populism in four years, whether it’s Donald Trump 2.0 or Ivanka 1.0.”
Although Biden’s tenure as Obama’s No. 2 helped him earn the trust of black Democrats, it’s dogged him when it comes to certain policies, including immigration.
Just as more liberal Democrats are now upping their criticism of him over his Obama connection, more centrist primary rivals, such as former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg, deployed the same tactic before the Iowa caucuses.
“My point is I see it as moving on from what we started,” Biden said in response at the time.
Biden’s past is a relatively unique problem in White House politics.
While Franklin Roosevelt is the only president to have served more than two terms, Martin Van Buren, Richard Nixon, and George H.W. Bush were previously the only understudies promoted in their own right. Theodore Roosevelt, Calvin Coolidge, Harry Truman, Lyndon Johnson, and others were elected after inheriting the office from a dead predecessor. Several others won their party’s nomination while vice president but weren’t able to ascend to the Oval Office, including Richard Nixon in 1960, Hubert Humphrey, Walter Mondale, and Al Gore.
