American presidents, past and present, don't always get along perfectly. And that relationship can be even more complicated when a sitting president once served as vice president. President Biden and former President Barack Obama have seemed to dance a bit of a delicate dance when it comes to their relationship in the Biden era. It's clear Biden wants to forge his own path and define his presidency on his own terms. It's also clear that Obama has some serious celebrity status among Democrats, and he might be helpful to Biden as Biden navigates some crises and as the midterms get closer. I miss you too. That's why I came back. I love you back.
That tension was highlighted this week as Obama headed to the White House for the first time in Biden's term. And he immediately thanked Vice President Biden. Vice President Biden. Vice President. It's still unclear if that was a planned gag or just an old habit. That was all Senate. My president. Obama came to the White House to support Biden as he signed an executive order to strengthen the Affordable Care Act. Obama's appearance also happened against the backdrop of low poll numbers for Biden and while the Democrats are hoping for some sort of spark to reignite the base. So will Obama's reemergence make much of an impact? And what does the former president's appearance say about his relationship with his own former vice president? Biden and Obama have publicly claimed to be best friends, even brothers. But what do we know about the real status of their relationship and what it might mean as we head toward the midterms?
This is Can He Do That, a podcast that explores the powers and limitations of American government in a time of deep division. I'm Alison Michaels. Obama came to the White House for a, quote unquote, celebration of the Affordable Care Act. And it sort of seems like they potentially maybe wanted this for the 12th anniversary, but missed it by 13 days because there were other things going on in the world. I turned to reporter Amy Linsky, who was at the White House for the ACA event on Tuesday. I think Biden is trying very hard to show that he is associating himself with this plan that is very popular. The executive order that Biden signed, it fixes a thing called the family glitch. It's a very wonky flaw that was part of the ACA. It's not a big, flashy executive order that would typically attract a room full of top Democrats.
like Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama. If you can get millions of people health coverage and better protection, it is, to quote a famous American, a pretty big deal. It was really more about the messaging of we Democrats reminding you that we created this program that has become very popular and we are fighting for it every day to make it even better. And I think that's what they were trying to say. So this visit from Obama is happening at a time when Biden's domestic agenda has really stalled on Capitol Hill and Democrats are expressing a lot of concerns about the 2022 midterms. Was Obama's visit a bit of a nod to that? Does the White House hope that his visit could re-energize the base a little bit? I think that's absolutely right. If you look at this week for Joe Biden, he started the week on Monday with a big...
event that had giant Mack trucks driven onto the south lawn of the White House to focus on the work he's doing to try to attract more truck drivers. The good news is that since I took office, we've begun to turn things around. In fact, in 2021 was the best year for trucking employment since 1994. And he has Obama to the White House for the first time. And what he is trying to do and the White House is trying to do this week is really shift attention onto his domestic agenda and on what he's doing to keep down costs for families, to try to work on easing the...
problems that Americans are feeling with the supply chain, and to remind Americans that he is attentive to inflation and to rising costs, which at this moment at least appears that it will be the biggest issue coming up in the midterms. That's $200 every single month, available for other needs in their lives, from gas to groceries to other basic necessities. And this messaging is aimed at Democrats. I mean, if you look at Biden's polling, if you look at his approval rating, it has really been depressed by the fact that a big chunk of Democrats are saying that they are not happy with the direction of the country and they're not happy with the way that Biden is handling his role. And you think that those people would be fairly easy to get them back into the White House's corner. So bringing out a big Democratic star, somebody who Democrats look very favorably of and reminding them of Barack Obama, and that is something that is aimed at shoring up Biden's brand and helping remind Democrats that they should be supportive of this White House.
bit about the relationship between Biden and Obama. Is it unusual that it took Obama sort of this long to make an appearance at the White House during Biden's time in office? The idea that Biden and Obama have not been together at the White House for more than a year is a little unusual because these two men have made such a big deal about their... close relationship and their friendship. White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki kind of asked about this dynamic at the briefing, even said... They continue to talk regularly. They are real friends, not just Washington friends. And so I'm sure they will talk about events in the world as well as their families and personal lives. So I'll try to get around... So given the fact that AIDS to both men are claiming that it's a real, real friendship, and the two of them have lived, you know, just...
about two miles apart for the last year and three months, it is a little surprising that they wouldn't have gotten together before this. You would think perhaps they would have had lunch or they would have had a dinner. So there was a little bit of oddity to this idea that Obama had not been back to the White House before this event. Yeah, Biden's even publicly referred to Obama as his best friend, at least on social media, with some funny images of friendship bracelets and whatnot. But a lot has been made of their friendship publicly. How do the two men themselves talk about each other at this point? Biden has referred to Obama as a Biden, sort of his highest compliment, like inviting him into the family. Obama referred to him...
as his brother. So they both use these terms that are, you know, as if there is a blood tie between them. But maybe like many families, there are disagreements between people who are close. And I think, you know, when you're looking for where there has been the biggest distance between them, it came around 2016 when Hillary Clinton was running for president and Joe Biden was also very strongly considering running. And Obama made it clear who his preference was in that Hillary Clinton was his preferred candidate. He sort of couched this as giving Biden space to make the right decision. But I don't think there was a lot of ambiguity about what...
Obama felt that decision was. And that certainly stung people in Biden's orbit. Was that position from Obama a reflection about how he thought Joe Biden did as vice president? Do we know how Obama feels Biden performed in that role? Obama has said nothing sort of publicly other than praise of his vice president. But some of Obama's top aides will speak on background and have sort of a different view. They saw Biden as being very long winded, sometimes to a point to where they just felt that the vice president was being unhelpful or was not cutting the deals the way that they wanted him to cut them with a hill. You know, I have not sat down to talk to Obama himself.
about this or to Biden himself about this. They have been very careful about preserving this relationship, which you'd expect. But you can sort of see that there have been fissures to it when you kind of start talking to the people around both men. What is also clear is that they do trust one another. So it's a complicated relationship. For all of the moments where Obama's very top staff has sort of rolled their eyes at Biden or moments where Biden's top staff has felt a little bit stung by some of the things that Obama has done or hasn't done, you know, you still have, these are two men who...
do get on the phone and talk to each other at crucial moments. And the way kind of one person described it to me who has been close to both of them is that, you know, Biden does not have a lot of people around him who are kind of, you know, principal levels, who are kind of big stars in their own rights. He's really surrounded himself with a lot of people who are longtime staffers, people who trust but don't have the point of view of kind of a principal. And Obama is one of the few people who can play that role and say things to Biden that he might not want to hear. You know, Obama did surround himself with people willing to say things to him that he didn't want to hear. And, you know, I think there's sort of a mixed bag with that. I mean, you don't always want to be around people telling you things you don't want to hear.
here. But Obama had people with an enormous amount of personal political capital who weren't really all of that reliant on their White House position for kind of influence in Washington or in their sphere. So that is a very different dynamic. And that does make the relationship with Obama fairly impactful and particularly important. These are two men who...
do get on the phone and talk to each other at crucial moments. And the way one person described it to me is that Biden does not have a lot of people around him who are kind of big stars in their own rights. He's really surrounded himself with people who are longtime staffers. And Obama is one of the few people who can play that role and say things to Biden that he might not want to hear. Yeah, did Biden serve that role for Obama at all? He did. And it's sort of been said that Biden does not have a Joe Biden in his administration. That's kind of the shorthand about this dynamic. But Obama has the ability to serve that role, you know, kind of if needed. And, you know, there have been times when that has been invoked. I want to focus on Obama and Biden, but the conversation we've just had.
had sort of beg the question of why Kamala Harris has not filled that role for Joe Biden. Why is that dynamic so different than what Obama and Biden seem to have? Yeah, no, that's a really good question. And the answer there is because Harris does not come to the role with the depth of experience that Biden came to the role with. One of the joys of Harris and one of the things that she brings is that she's young and she's dynamic and she has kind of like a spark to her. But she was not in the Senate for very long. She was in California politics. That's how she came up. She didn't come up in Washington. So she doesn't have that same like lengthy, decades-long relationships on the Hill that Biden brought. And meanwhile, Obama was...
a scenario that is more typical of Harris in that he had just arrived in Washington. He had come up through Illinois politics. And so he didn't really have the experience with all of the same personalities who've been running Washington for decades and decades. Biden was a little bit more used to that and could see down the road legislatively in a way that was useful to Obama. Whereas Harris, just because she has not been in Washington and it's no knock against her, it does not come with that sort of, you know, many, many, many years of being around the ringer in Washington a few times. More on the relationship between Obama and Biden after break.
Did you know you can play the Washington Post's games for free? Find the crossword, keyword, ridges, and on the record in the Washington Post app or at WashingtonPost.com slash games. No subscription required. If this ends up being a referendum on what's going to be good for blue-collar workers, I'll put my guy Joe Biden up against anybody when it comes to fighting on behalf of those families because he's been there. He comes out of Scranton, Pennsylvania. He's been fighting for those folks ever since he got into the Senate.
It's interesting to think about Biden, who as a candidate talked a lot about being sort of a member of the Obama administration. He touted all of these policies from the Obama era, so much so that he was even mocked by Julian Castro, his opponent at the time at one of the debates. Has that impression affected Biden's approach to governing? Is he trying now to sort of really distinguish himself from the Obama era? I think that you've seen.
Biden a few times make some sort of passing reference to wanting to do things a little bit bigger and better than they had been done before. And that does sort of, you know, evoke a natural reference to how things were done in the Obama administration. So when Biden did his American Rescue Plan, he really wanted to make sure he was going out and selling it to the country and noted that he had learned a mistake from the Obama administration, which he felt didn't do a good job selling some of their accomplishments. The Obama people famously said that good policy is a good politics with the idea that like programs will sell themselves. And Biden's take on that was, well, you know, we learned that.
wasn't necessarily the case and good policy is important, but you also have to do a good job explaining it to people. You've got to tell people in plain, simple, straightforward language what it is you're doing to help. You've got to be able to tell a story. Tell the story of what you're about to do and why it matters. Right. But it does seem like his team has struggled with the same messaging issues that the Obama team did. Yes. Ironically, they identified the error of Obama's ways, yet still repeated the mistake or have so far. And some of the staff from the Obama administration has carried over to the Biden administration. Jen Psaki, for example, had worked for Obama. She works for Biden now, obviously. Is there a tension between like this group of Obama?
people and Biden people? Or is there sort of a cohesion among those two groups? You know, I think there's a little bit of both. Jen Psaki is a great example. She did work in the Obama administration. She was a spokesperson for the State Department. She had applied and really wanted to be Obama's White House Press Secretary in the later years of the administration. And she did not get that job. She was passed over for it. And she's talked about how that was really devastating for her. And now she does have the job and she's sort of excelling at it in a way that Obama's people really didn't ever have the star power that she has now garnered. But these are people who were not the principals. They were not the department heads in the Obama administration. They were a few levels.
down and it makes sense that they would rise up. But I think that you also see that they are pleased that Biden has recognized them in a way that they weren't quite ready for the roles, evidently, when Obama was there. Is there any reluctance from the Biden administration to sort of call on Obama to, you know, draw people back or to increase enthusiasm for Biden? Is there a sense of reluctance around that? I think they know they need to do it. He's a great asset. But bringing back a former president is always a little bit tricky. Al Gore famously did not want to campaign with Bill Clinton. Even Hillary Clinton hesitated at times to use her husband in her campaign. You know, it just brings up this kind of awkward tableau of, you know, one man who's...
trying to do what is the hardest job in the world, and another, he's done it, he's over, he got elected twice. You know, there's going to be a natural difference in demeanor where the former president's going to feel looser and happier. But also, I mean, Obama is one of the greatest Democratic messengers of his generation, and Biden is not. But I think it would be even harder for them to not do it. They really do need Obama if they want to sort of turn the narrative around, which I think the White House has been very clear as a priority. Yeah, just thinking about the Clinton's example you gave, I do remember at the 2016 Democratic Convention, Bill Clinton came out to speak on behalf of Hillary. In the spring of 1971,
I met a girl. It sort of seemed like grandpa telling stories. It was like a very, very much seemed like, you know, that his moment had passed. But when you mentioned Clinton, I mean, you should also remember the 2012 Democratic Convention when Bill Clinton did come out and spoke on behalf of Obama and sort of explained his agenda and gave a powerful speech that rallied Democrats behind Obama. I want a man who believes with no doubt that we can build a new American dream economy driven by innovation and creativity, by education, and yes, by cooperation.
And by the way, after last night, I want a man who had a good sense to marry Michelle Obama. And it was a big moment where you had a former president bailing out a current one and where Obama was the one who kind of looked a little bit stiff in the comparison. So it is a long, fraught, but frequently used sort of helpline for presidents. Well, I suppose it remains to be seen if this particular use of Obama as a helpline ends up being successful. We will stay tuned. Annie, thank you so much for your time. Thank you.
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