Gabriel Debenedetti - The Long Alliance: The Imperfect Union of Joe Biden and Barack Obama

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To my parents

A vice president is totally a reflection of the president. There is no inherent power. None. Zero. And it completely, totally depends on your relationship with the president.

Joe Biden, 2015

I am president. I am not king. I cant do these things just by myself.

Barack Obama, 2010

Barack Obama was almost enjoying himself.

He didnt really mind the pandemic-imposed isolation from basically everyone other than his immediate family. And by September 2020 life on Marthas Vineyardwhere he and Michelle, the former first lady, had mostly stayed since leaving DC for roomier environs that springwas tailor-made for an ex-president who had finally finished the first volume of the memoir hed taken forever to write, who liked to golf, and who had, at long last, figured out the proper role for himself in his old partner Joe Bidens quest to beat Donald Trump and perhaps save American democracy in the process.

This hadnt been as intuitive as it might seem for the famously close pair, seeing as how Obama started the election cycle by essentially trying (and failing) to make sure Biden understood that he really didnt need to run this time. Hed undertaken this act of light dissuasion because of what he perceived to be a mismatch between Biden and the political moment, but mostly out of concern for the former vice president. Hed then proceeded to monitor the Biden campaign but grown plenty interested in a procession of candidates not named Joe. None of this was particularly amusing to the ex-VP, who, despite it all, still insisted to anyone whod listen that the two were like brothers after their conspicuously tight eight years in office together. Then, as COVID-19 started bearing down, Obama had indeed begun to help Biden behind the scenes with some sub-rosa encouragement and covert political muscle-flexinga combination that ended up being far more important than the public appreciated as Biden won the nomination. And, more recently, the supposed retiree had begun supplementing his role as the Democratic nominees most important surrogate on the trail by also becoming one of his top private advisors and an important voice on the phone for Bidens highest-ranking aides, too. For a few months now hed been way more involved in the campaign than almost anyone outside of that tiny circle knew.

Still, the fall wasnt looking particularly easy to navigate, between the viruss rampage, the ongoing racial reckoning across the country, and, as of late, the growing likelihood that the sitting president might not accept the result of the election if he lost in November. Few people in Bidens inner circle doubted that a democratic crisis might be brewing, and so they hardly needed Obamas repeated warnings to take the prospect seriously. Yet watching from afar, and after discussing the matter repeatedly with friends and allies between campaign rallies and on calls from the Vineyard, the ex-president determined he still needed his own real plan for what to do if Trump refused to admit defeat or in case he sowed doubt about the result if the vote took longer to count than usual, thanks to the increased popularity of mail-in ballots. So, that month, Obama convened a small group of his own advisors to map out his plan for the final stretch of campaign season. They talked through some of these nightmare scenarios and determined that the ex-presidentwhod insisted on respecting the polite conventions of the postpresidency even as Trump spent four years pulverizing those kinds of norms, and even as some liberals pined for some sort of implausible Obama-as-savior plotshould be as active as ever for Biden on the trail but again refrain from saying much publicly should one of those dangerous story lines come to pass. Unless things spiraled and it became absolutely necessary, he would step back and let Biden take the lead, as was appropriate.

Further, Obama determined that after the polls opened he shouldnt talk to Biden at all until the result was official, since the last thing either of them wanted was Trump accusing them of some fantastical, corrupt, coordinated scheme to steal the election, and also because Obama wanted to be as cautious as possible to avoid any premature celebration at a delicate moment.

They could handle the distance. Theyd been talking plenty recently, but Joe as Nominee, Barack as Backstage Guru was really only the latest chapter in the complicated saga of the relationship between the forty-fourth and would-be-forty-sixth presidents. Plus, both of them wished to project the message that a Biden win would mean a return to a normal democratic order. You get congratulated only when you win, period.

Biden understood the outlines of this plan. Hed welcomed Obamas help during the campaign, of courseanything from his longtime friend and ally who remained one of the worlds most popular political figures could be useful. But Biden had also slightly surprised some of his other friends with his sensitivity to the idea that his victory would represent a restoration of the Obama years, considering how explicitly hed run on a return to normalcy, and on his tenure as VP, during the primary especially. Either way, Obamas logistics were hardly top of mind for Biden in the final days of his campaign. It was nearly half a century after he got to Washington, over three decades after hed started running for president, a dozen years since his public profile had been transformed by the partnership in the White House, and just months since he had correctly gauged the countrys exhaustion, despite the supposedly savvy crowds insistence that he was hopelessly out of touch. And this was it.

In other words, Biden had other things to think about on election night. At home in Wilmington, Delaware, surrounded by his family and his longtime political strategist Mike Donilon, he sat nervously, doing what he always did as he waited for results. He knew he had lawyers on standby in DC monitoring any irregularities and Trumps pronouncements that he couldnt possibly lose, so Biden stuck to flipping between NBC and CNN and working his phone. He called his friend Doug Jones to console him ten minutes after the Alabama senator lost his reelection bid. He checked in with old buddies and allies from past campaigns and past lives who were peppered around swing states like Michigan and Florida. And he stayed away from the one number he knew he couldnt dial.

Biden had entered the night expecting to win but knowing it could take a while. He only started to exhale when Fox News, of all networks, called Arizona, usually a Republican state, for him after 11:00 p.m. eastern time. Still, there went his plan to victoriously address the nation on Tuesday night. It was all trending in the right direction, but it clearly wasnt going to be official quite yet. He stuck to his calls as his top advisors across town in Wilmington checked in with his analytics team in Philadelphia, which kept crunching its numbers. Biden maintained his pace as Wednesday approached. Florida and North Carolina were gone, but even GOP-friendly Georgia was still in play, and it looked like Pennsylvaniahis childhood homemight push him over the edge when more votes came in, whenever that was going to be.