Democratic Primary 2020: Joe Biden is not Barack Obama

Thursday, just hours before the third Democratic presidential debate, Joe Biden's campaign has published a new online advertisement. It was an unusual place in the sense that it was not Joe Biden at all. It was about Barack Obama.

"Barack Obama was a great president," could be the slogan of Biden's presidential campaign in 2020. In Biden's first response to the debate, he turned to Senator Elizabeth Warren and said, "The senator says she's for Bernie. Well, I'm for Barack. "

To bend Biden's sentence in 2007 on Rudy Giuliani, it often seems that, for Biden, a sentence consists of three parts: a noun, a verb and Barack Obama.

Biden served loyally and effectively as Vice President of Obama. When Obama wanted to make sure that the stimulus money did not disappear in favor of the fraud, he turned to Biden – "no one meddles with Joe," he said. said – and Biden succeeded. When the White House wanted to avoid the fiscal precipice, it was Biden who entered into the agreement with the leader of the Senate minority, Mitch McConnell. When Obama missed the first debate against Mitt Romney, it was Biden who restored the mojo of the ticket by intimidating the representative Paul Ryan. When the Democrats held their 2012 convention, it was Biden's speech that got the best ratings – beating both Bill Clinton and Obama.

But Joe Biden is not Barack Obama. Some vice-presidents are chosen to be underlined; Bill Clinton chose Al Gore to bring home his youth and moderation. Others are chosen for their balance. they were chosen not for their resemblance to the candidate but for their difference. Biden was a balance choice. "I want someone with gray hair in their hair," Obama said. Biden's presence on the ticket showed that Obama knew what he did not know. But that's why, by definition, Biden does not reflect Obama's political appeal or personal style and does not reflect Obama's approach to governance.

Mr. Biden is not perfectly right or left of Obama in matters of foreign or domestic policy, and he diverges dramatically in the way he makes decisions, understands the basics of politics and manages a government. Thus, by making such an explicit campaign as Obama's heir of power, he conceals both his strengths and his weaknesses and confuses voters with the type of president he will be.

It's time for Joe Biden to stop campaigning for Obama's third term and focus on the case of his first.

Iraq: the difference in definition

Start with foreign policy, where the president has maximum authority and where the political roots of Biden are the deepest.

Scott J. Ferrell / Quarterly Journal / Getty Images

Biden and Obama were opposing sides of the central foreign policy issue of the time: invading Iraq or not. Biden voted to give President George W. Bush permission for the war, and although he criticized Bush's preparation and execution, his main argument was not that Bush was wrong to invade but that he was not sufficiently involved in the success of the intervention and hid the true cost of the public. In Promises to keep, 2007 memoir of Biden, he wrote:

I still maintain that the most costly mistake made by the President has been his reluctance to hold the American people to the same level as to what would be necessary to impose in Iraq. He never seemed willing to ask a very small percentage to make a real sacrifice to win the war. He did not tell them that more than a hundred thousand soldiers would be needed for many years. He did not tell them that the cost could exceed $ 300 billion. He did not tell them that even after paying such a high price, success was not assured because no one had ever managed to force a nation back, let alone an entire region.

Of course, Obama opposed the war in Iraq, which is why he defeated Biden in the 2008 presidential campaign.

Nevertheless, it would be too simplistic to say that the only difference between Obama and Biden in foreign policy is negativity.

In the Obama administration, Biden has often adopted an accommodating stance – perhaps motivated by a sense of comfort that Obama has not always shown in defending the army's recommendations. Biden opposed the expansion of US forces in Afghanistan, while Obama finally hired another 30,000 troops. He recommended against the raid in Pakistan that killed Osama Bin Laden. He recommended not to intervene in Libya, a warning that now seems considerate.

In his memoirs of the White House The world as it is, Ben Rhodes recalls that Biden "said several times[ed] this experience had taught him that "any foreign policy is the extension of personal relationships". This is not how Obama envisioned foreign policy. But, just as importantly, this is not the way Obama envisioned domestic politics.

Staff is political

Biden's campaign in 2020 deeply seduces Obama, but during his vice-presidency, Obama's unobtrusive criticism of the Biden world – which echoed Washington – is that Obama has not passed enough time to look for Republicans in Congress, or even Democrats in Congress. Maybe if he spent more time building trust and friendship with congressional leaders, he would be able to do more.

In 2013, during his dinner at the White House with the correspondents, Obama presented a funny riff, because he was not joking about these critics. "Some people still do not think I spend enough time with Congress," he said. "Why do not you have a drink with Mitch McConnell?" They ask. Really? Why not you have a drink with Mitch McConnell !?

This is part of the balance that Biden has brought as vice president. Obama "needed someone who would deal with Mitch so he was not obliged," said David Axelrod, Obama's chief strategist. Biden's approach to politics – be it foreign leaders, congressional negotiations or the Iowa State Fair – is relational. Biden has often been deployed to do the work in person rejected by Obama.

Unlike Obama, Biden is a real creature of the Senate. I've described Biden's career in the Senate longer, so I'm not going to tell these stories here. Suffice it to say that his political career was defined by his enthusiasm for relations in the Senate, and you can consider this as an argument both for or against his candidacy:

Biden may be the candidate with the best chance of legislating in the current system. If McConnell is the leader of the majority, if 51 Democrats are still subject to the whims of systematic filibustering, he could perhaps draw a little more from his former colleagues than his competitors.

[…] But if you believe that the problems of American politics have gone from the personal to the structural, it's a cold comfort. A president who remembers less how legislation has worked in times past may be freer to imagine the reforms needed to make it work in the future. Biden is probably the least likely candidate to prioritize an ambitious reform of the system. Seeing so clearly the humanity of his colleagues, he lost sight of the structure that surrounds them. 45 years of personal kindness and a career built in the era of mixed parties can do a lot to mask the primordial power of polarization.

This is the most important political difference between Obama and Biden, a difference that Biden conceals strategically but hides as a vulnerability in his campaign.

Obama complained about the system. Biden represents him.

In 2008, Obama presented himself as a reformer disgusted by corruption and polarization paralyzing American politics. Even as president, he has drawn a politically useful disregard for the banalities and politicism of Washington.

Biden represents the system that Obama sought to reform. This is the role that Biden initially played: Obama was a young man who turned his inexperience into an asset by distancing himself from a political system that had failed the Americans. Biden was an older man who could play the role of ambassador and guide needed.

Bill Clark / CQ Roll Call

This is a real vulnerability for Biden. He alone will be responsible for the political decisions he has made in four decades. Iraq, the bankruptcy bill, the anti-crime bill, the NAFTA, the relocation of jobs in China – all that. And the flip side of Biden's efforts to applaud the Obama administration's achievements is that it also takes its failures. "You are invoking President Obama more than anyone else in this campaign," Cory Booker told Biden during the second democratic debate. "You can not do it when it suits you and dodge it when it's not."

In this regard, Biden is less an heir to Obama's criticism of American politics than his target, and Trump, who is adept at running against the Washington establishment, will take full advantage of it.

Biden's campaign promised that after four years Trump, the American people would be ready to receive someone who knows how Washington works and wants to use that knowledge to his advantage. This is, in many ways, the reverse of Obama's original promise – which may be right for Biden at the moment, but fundamentally differentiates Obama from its appeal and vulnerabilities. And this is a big challenge for the Democrats: during the recent presidential elections, the Americans have repeatedly chosen the foreigner, not the insider, the candidate.

For this reason, Biden must clearly and explicitly expose the argument of his political style. And, sometimes, he did it. "Some of these people say. "Biden just does not understand," Biden said in his announcement. "You can not work with Republicans anymore. This is no longer how it works. Well, guys, I'm going to say something offensive. I know how to make government work – not because I talked about it or tweeted it, but because I did it. I worked on the other side to reach a consensus. To help the government operate in the past. I can do it again with your help.

The problem that Biden is facing in getting so deeply into the Obama administration is that the government often did not work at that time. After taking over the House in 2010, Republicans blocked Obama's and Washington's agenda in stalemate and recrimination. When Hillary Clinton ran in 2016 as the continuation of the Obama era, she lost to Donald Trump. It is possible that Trump has been rethought by his constituents over the past four years, but the argument is thin.

Biden must argue that he can overcome the frustrations of Obama's second term, and that his approach will build on what has preceded, rather than simply return to it. It's an argument that, according to my reports, Biden is convinced, but he devotes so much of his energy to the debates praising Obama's approach to politics that he leaves little space to define his.

That's why Biden must behave as his own man rather than as Obama. It's not Obama and he will not be able to lead a campaign to the Obama or direct an administration to the Obama. He will have his own ideas, his own staff, his own ways of solving difficult problems and navigating the paths of American politics. What needs to be established is the case of Joe Biden, not that of Barack Obama.

Obama may have been a great president, but he does not show up. Biden is.