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

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.