The
Bidenization of America
The
veep is no joke -- and he's making a serious play for 2016.
BY
DAVID ROTHKOPF | JANUARY 14, 2013
·
Forget
Dick Cheney: Joe Biden is the most influential vice president in American
history. He is poised for a role in the Obama administration's second
term that seems sure to make Cheney look like a shrinking violet, and Al Gore
look like little more than a spear-carrier for Bill Clinton.
·
Consider
this: The veep has thus far taken the point role in the two most important
initiatives of this year for the Obama administration: the fiscal cliff
battle and gun control. He is perhaps the president's single most
influential foreign policy advisor. Obama's incoming national security team
is Biden's favorite players from his days as chairman of the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee. John Kerry and Chuck Hagel are seen as far closer to
him than to the president. Tom Donilon, the president's national security
advisor, is also seen as close to the vice president, which should come as a
surprise to no one since his wife, Catherine Russell, is the vice president's
current chief of staff. Biden's previous chief of staff, Ron Klain, is one of
two men considered likely to replace Jack Lew as Obama's chief of staff.
Biden's top national security advisor, Tony Blinken, is seen as heading for a
promotion (if moving away from this particular vice president could be seen as
a step up), either stepping in for U.S. U.N. ambassador Susan Rice should she
someday become national security advisor or moving over to a top job in Kerry's
State Department.
·
In
terms of day-to-day foreign policy decision-making, Biden is a regular at the
morning meeting at which the president, Donilon, outgoing White House
counterterrorism chief John Brennan, Donilon deputy Denis McDonough, and
Blinken review the latest intelligence and make the big decisions that are
passed along to the other arms of the administration to execute. Obama consults
Biden regularly, and is known to respect his opinion greatly. This was
sometimes a bone of contention for officials like
Bob Gates and Hillary Clinton, who often sought a tougher line on key issues
than the generally more dovish team led by Biden. But those officials are gone
or leaving now.
·
The
goofy Uncle Veep persona that follows Biden around like a stray dog, largely
thanks to his garrulousness and occasional slips of the tongue, could not be
farther from the reality of the role this seasoned Washington insider is
playing. Washington is a town in which relationships are currency, and given
the fact that the president is both relatively new to the city and not exactly
a social animal, it is Biden's ties that are often critical to helping the White
House advance its goals. This was never clearer than at the turn of the New
Year, when it took Biden's personal intervention with Senate Minority Leader
Mitch McConnell to broker the deal that saved America -- for a while at least
-- from going over the fiscal cliff.
·
While
the role Biden is playing may come as a surprise to outsiders, it is not the
one for which he has been preparing his whole life. I vividly remember a story
told to me by my former boss, the late Rep. Steve Solarz, who, upon arriving in
Congress in 1978, discovered he was also allowed on the floor of the Senate. So
he walked over one night and discovered, pacing the floor and orating remarks
into the Congressional Record, young Senator Joe Biden. The chamber was empty
save for a tired-looking gentleman sitting at the chair, but Biden was
gesticulating and emoting as though he were speaking to a stadium. At that
moment, Solarz used to say, it was clear to him that this was a guy who was
planning on a run to the top.
·
Insiders
say that Biden, who would be 74 come the 2016 election, is intent on succeeding
Obama in the Oval Office. Further, there are clearly some around Obama who see
him as a more desirable choice than Clinton. Indeed, there are rumblings
that the old Obama-Clinton divide -- never far beneath the surface -- may widen
again as a White House camp dominated by Biden tees things up for the next
presidential season.
·
Unlike
Cheney, however, who wore his influence like the Star Wars character he evoked
wore his helmet and cape, Biden remains one of the few Washington figures who
can actually be described as beloved by many. It might seem that it is
his humor or his million-dollar smile that have earned him that affection. But
in reality, to those on the inside in this administration it has been his
loyalty, his tirelessness in pursuit of some very tough goals, his willingness
to speak candidly to the president, and his special combination of experience
and intelligence that have put him in this unique role.
·
No
one saw it coming. Except, of course, the people who have been paying attention
to his steady (or is it relentless?) ascent for the past three and a half
decades.
