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Steven Levingston - Barack and Joe: The Making of an Extraordinary Partnership

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    Barack and Joe: The Making of an Extraordinary Partnership
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A vivid and inspiring account of the bromance between Barack Obama and Joe Biden.The extraordinary partnership of Barack Obama and Joe Biden is unique in American history. The two men, their characters and styles sharply contrasting, formed a dynamic working relationship that evolved into a profound friendship. Their affinity was not predestined. Obama and Biden began wary of each other: Obama an impatient freshman disdainful of the Senates plodding ways; Biden a veteran of the chamber and proud of its traditions.Gradually they came to respect each others values and strengths and rode into the White House together in 2008. Side-by-side through two tension-filled terms, they shared the day-to-day joys and struggles of leading the most powerful nation on earth. They accommodated each others quirks: Bidens famous miscues kept coming, and Obama overlooked them knowing they were insignificant except as media fodder. With his expertise in foreign affairs and legislative matters, Biden took on an unprecedented role as chief adviser to Obama, reshaping the vice presidency. Together Obama and Biden guided Americans through a range of historic moments: a devastating economic crisis, racial confrontations, war in Afghanistan, and the dawn of same-sex marriage nationwide. They supported each other through highs and lows: Obama provided a welcome shoulder during the illness and death of Bidens son Beau.As many Americans turn a nostalgic eye toward the Obama presidency, Barack and Joe offers a new look at this administration, its absence of scandal, dedication to truth, and respect for the media. This is the first book to tell the full story of this historic relationship and its substantial impact on the Obama presidency and its legacy.

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Copyright 2019 by Steven Levingston Foreword 2019 by Dr Michael Eric Dyson - photo 1

Copyright 2019 by Steven Levingston

Foreword 2019 by Dr. Michael Eric Dyson

Cover design by Amanda Kain

Cover photograph courtesy of Barack Obama Presidential Library

Cover copyright 2019 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.

Hachette Book Group supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.

The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the authors intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact permissions@hbgusa.com. Thank you for your support of the authors rights.

Hachette Books

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First Edition: October 2019

Hachette Books is a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc. The Hachette Books name and logo are trademarks of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.

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Lyrics from Keep On Pushing by Curtis Mayfield 1964 Warner-Tamerlane Publishing Corp. Used with permission.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2019946919

ISBNs: 978-0-316-48786-3 (hardcover), 978-0-316-48788-7 (ebook)

E3-20190904-JV-NF-ORI

Kennedy and King

For Suzanne, Katie, and Ben

The buddy film is an American staple that mostly portrays the virtues of male bonding and rejects stereotypes of men as unemotional and uncaring creatures. The genre often pairs men of clashing styles and conflicting worldviews, and in the last few decades, it has brought together men of different races to combat the belief that we cant get along in the real world. There was surely progress in getting black and white men together on screen, but that didnt keep stereotypes from melting the celluloid. Black men were, at best, adjuncts to the white world or its convenient facilitators, as long as they were subordinate to the white star. At worst, black men were fall guys in a cinematic alchemy where history was reversed and black accomplishment was deceitfully turned into white heroism. The buddy film occasionally careened into magical Negro territory where the black male foil transformed the white protagonist in a quest for salvation, that is, if the white man didnt turn out to be the savior himself.

Near the end of the first decade of the new century, we watched a political version of the biracial buddy film play out in the nations capital for eight years. It might even be argued by their followers that a dynamic duo took up revolutionary residence in Washington, DC. Barack Obama and Joe Biden swept into town as an interracial Batman and Robin out to vanquish the harmful specter of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney and to bring light to a land languishing in darkness. This is where the buddy film adopted a superhero script and substantially upped the stakes of their partnership. Unlike most buddy films, the black guy was the biggest star; unlike most magical Negro films, the black guy was not only the source and symbol of salvation but the savior himself; and unlike most superhero films, at least before Black Panther, the black guy was the swashbuckling lead.

Barack and Joe were important to the nations politics because they embodied an edifying symbiosislets cheekily call it an Obidenosis. Obama was the countrys first black president, a tall, brilliant, charismatic slice of Americana whose blended racial pedigree lent credence to his claim that we didnt live in a black or white America, butand his mixed genes proved itthe United States of America. Biden had been a commanding force in the nations dealings for decades, a sui generis political prodigy who won a Senate seat at twenty-nine and a proud Irishman who quoted Seamus Heaney and backslapped his way into the hearts of large swaths of the American people. Obamas superior political ingenuity spilled from his sophisticated brain and his nose for uncanny timing, for knowing what was needed when. Biden, despite his extraordinary run in the Senate, failed twice to leave the chamber in unsuccessful presidential runs, depending on Obamas choice of him as vice president to boost his standing in the political hierarchy. In this buddy film it was clear who was the man and who was the man next to the man, reinforcing his sublimely subordinate position by occasionally massaging the bosss shoulders.

Obama and Bidens spectacular partnership thrived because both men agreed to swap out meaningless duties and trifling symbolism in the vice presidency for substantive engagement and hearty brotherhood. When Obama came callingand at first, it didnt seem likely, since Bidens proclivity to commit gaffes included an impolitic and racially charged assessment of Obamas clean and articulate status as a black presidential candidate when they both vied for the Oval Office in 2008 before Biden dropped outBiden, though honored, insisted that, among other things, he get weekly private time with Obama and that he be in on every major presidential deliberation. And, perhaps most important, Biden wanted to be able to tell the truth as he saw it. Obama ate it up, and for the most part, despite Bidens predictable stumbles and unpredictable missteps, the two men flourished as a model of political fraternity in service of the nations highest good. (Plus, one of Bidens most high-profile mistakes, getting out ahead of Obama in support of gay marriage, proved that Bidens courage and honesty forced a reticent head of state to take the sort of stand he had already privately affirmed. While Obama enjoyed a fictional anger translator on televisions Key and Peele, Biden, if not quite an Obama whisperer, may have been, on occasion, his sturdier public conscience.)

Steven Levingston, a gifted diviner of our political ethos and an eloquent chronicler of our national tendencies, delves purposefully into the relationship between Obama and Biden, showing how it was the magical melding of two forceful personalities who were quite dissimilar in many ways but capable of turning their differences into national benefit. If Obama was a bookish introvert, Biden was a literate extrovert, yet together they read the national mood, combining Baracks scholarly pensiveness and Joes emotional intelligence to lift the country from a seemingly intractable recession.

Levingston helps us to see how much of what drew Obama and Biden to each otherboth were athletes who sprinkled their speech with sports metaphors, both loved their kids (and Biden his grandkids), both fawned over their wives, both eagerly deflected acclaim for their achievements and instead heaped praise on their numerous collaborators and staffexisted off the books and beyond the stage. Yes, Obama and Biden shared an incurable love for the dreams and ideals of America, but they found in their mutually supportive ideas of empathetic manhood a portal to true intimacy and genuine camaraderie. They werent afraid to openly root for each other, admire each other, and, rather quickly in their luminous fellowship, to love each other.

Still, Levingston isnt afraid to show the uglier side of things too. Obama, like all good or at least effective politicians, could be calculating and strategic. When Obama stood for reelection in 2012, he let concern about his political fortunes fuel behind-the-scenes discussions about whether Hillary Clinton should replace Biden as Baracks running mate. There appeared to be real teeth to the consideration, and yet, ultimately, Biden prevailed, and so did Obama, winning reelection and preserving their friendship. When Biden was weighing a run for the presidency in 2016 as Obama left office, Barack steered him clear of the field and discouraged him from running, a development that hurt Joe. He believed that Obama was understandably looking out for his own legacy, feeling that Hillary, given the political landscape, could best protect it and carry it forward. But it still stung.

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