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Title: Barack and Joe: the Making of an Extraordinary Friendship by Steven Levingston, forward by Michael Eric Dyson
Details: Copyright 2019, Hachette Book Group Inc
Synopsis (By Way of Front Flap): "A VIVID AND INSPIRING ACCOUNT OF THE HISTORY-MAKING "BROMANCE" BETWEEN BARACK OBAMA AND JOE BIDEN
The extraordinary partnership of Barack Obama and Joe Biden is unique in American history, but their affinity was not predestined. In their first encounters in the Senate, Obama and Biden were wary of each other: Obama an impatient freshman disdainful of the Senate's plodding ways; Biden a veteran of the chamber and proud of its traditions.
In time, the two men came to respect each other's values and strengths and rode into the White House together in 2008. Side-by-side through two tension-filled terms, they shared the joys and struggles of leading the most powerful nation on earth. They accommodated each other's quirks: Obama overlooked Biden's famous verbal miscues, while the loquacious vice president often served as an emissary to Congress for the socially reserved president. 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 and each other through a range of moments both historic and profoundly personal: a devastating economic crisis, racial confrontations, war in Afghanistan, and the dawn of same-sex marriage nationwide, and the illness and death of Biden's 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."
Why I Wanted to Read It: Between books, this came up and I enjoy "behind the scenes" books, clearly, (to the point where I won't even try to list all previous ones here) so thought I'd have a look.
How I Liked It:
Timing can be absolutely everything. Get it right, and you've got a musical that highlights a timely forgotten founding father whilst also riding the wave of affection and nostalgia for the Obama Presidency and setting up a mood for the era of unprecedented protest that would follow. Get it wrong and you've got a musical decrying the W. Bush administration and the Iraq War in the wake of the glowing early years of Obama when the last thing any one wants to do is relive that time. Selling a book about a different time? Appeal the sensibilities of the current time that you think would buy your story!. So what does all of this mean for a 2019 book riding the Obama administration nostalgia wave, starring former President Obama and not-yet-President Biden?
You know our two lead characters, or at least you should. The author opens on a viral lunch date between the former President and the then-former Vice President in the summer of 2018, creating a charming visual (posing for selfies together and generally looking a lot more like family than former coworkers) and creating nostalgia for an era only recently bygone but seemingly more missed every day. It's from that late 2010s nostalgia for the Obama years that this book operates.
After that opening, the author gives a potted backstory of both men (more on that later) and their lives and ambitions. From there, we have their first meeting, their facing off as competitors for the White House, their eventual teaming up and win, and some behind-the-scenes stories about all the famous stories you've seen and/or heard about, with an added dose of post-Presidency consideration.
The author professes that Barack Obama and Joe Biden did not just set an unprecedented standard for how the President's relationship with the Vice-President could be, it also set a new standard for public standards of male friendship.
It's important to note the timing of the book. This was written post-Obama Presidency, but pre-Biden Presidency, as I said. It's also important to note that before the two were even out of office together, even before the election that would seat a, to put it criminally mildly, unlikely successor, nostalgia ran high and so did the memes.
Once Obama's successor was actually in office, seemingly no Presidency received a quicker burnishing than the forty-fourth's. And in 2018, there was talk about Biden as a contender for 2020, but it was far from a forgone conclusion. So a perfect time, with each ensuing horrific news story, for a feel good book, particularly in light of the midterm elections that year.
Years later, the book is a strange bit of ephemera about a President and a not-yet-President. But still, it's not without some poignant consideration. Michael Eric Dyson notes in the forward:
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 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. (pg x)
So a buddy film? Given the heavy-handed optics of American politics (at least, pre 2016), sure, that analogy works.
And in that vein, the author makes some interesting inroads in explaining why Obama and Biden made such an unique team.
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 Biden's predictable stumbles and unpredictable missteps, the two men flourished as a model of political fraternity in service of the nation's highest good. (Plus, one of Biden's most high-profile "mistakes," getting out ahead of Obama in support of gay marriage, proved that Biden's 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 television's Key and Peele, Biden, if not quite an Obama whisperer, may have been, on occasion, his sturdier public conscience.) (pg xi)
America had long blurred the worlds of politics and entertainment, and to many people these two stars were the latest in a long line of famed duos. America had a weakness for buddy teams. Felix and Oscar. Bert and Ernie. Buzz and Woody. To many Democrats, Barack and Joe may have even possessed a trace of Batman and Robin, sweeping in to save the world from the Republicans. (pg 102)
Biden's presence [at the 2009 "Beer Summit"] also balanced the look around the table. Instead of a lopsided image of two African Americans and one white man resolving their differences, the scene now projected racial equivalency: two blacks and two whites. Having Biden-- a cop-friendly, blue-collar, union guy-- at the table sent an administration message to law enforcement officers around the country who were disgruntled by President Obama's ill-chosen words. (pg 176)
An interesting point about the importance of visuals.
Joe's tutelage in passion and undaunted self-expression helped unlock a warmth in Barack that may not have been fully realized in public until he got Bidened, and because of this union of two strong men, a generous hug and kiss in front of the entire world became a mere reflex, an instinct. Whatever their differences, they hardly mattered anymore. They were both better for having mastered their friendship. If Biden taught Obama to loosen his tie, give a hug instead of a handshake, throw the speech out the window, Obama showed Biden the path to discipline, to crossing every t and dotting every i. "That bled into the office of the vice president," said Julie Smith, Biden's deputy national security advisor.
[...]
Breaking with two centuries of presidential history, Barack and Joe found a way through the thicket of high office and politics to form a lasting bond. "This was not a president and a vice president," former education secretary Arne Duncan explained. "This was two men, two people with a deep friendship who at a time of greatest need knew that someone had their back. That transcends politics and position. It's way way way bigger and much simpler, much more basic and human." (pg 252)
The author also has an interesting perspective on the history of the office of Vice President.
The vice presidency was deemed so insignificant that Senator Silas Wright of New York declined the nomination in 1844, and for long stretches the office sat unoccupied. Between 1812 and 1900, the United States had no sitting vice president for nearly twenty-seven years because of deaths, resignations, or successions to the presidency. During that time, there was no vice president eleven different times.
"Yet," Wrote historian Joel K Goldstein, "the country survived without any discernible cry for a means to fill vice-presidential vacancies. (pgs 70 and 71)
Moving on to his professional life, [Biden] reiterated that the vice presidency really has no power. But under Barack, Joe reminded his listeners, this vice president had a role unlike any other.
"Mr. President," Biden said, "you have.. you have more than kept your commitment to me by saying that you wanted me to ... to help govern... Every single thing you've asked me to do, Mr. President, you have trusted me to do."
Joe glanced over at Barack, standing beside him, to emphasize his point. Joe pondered the history. "I don't think, according to the presidential and vice-presidential scholars, that kind of relationship has existed," he said. "I mean, for real. That's all you, Mr. President. It's all you." (pg 266)
The author even puts forth the theory that the President and Vice President's open shows of affection to one another were important for the context of male friendship:
Barack and Joe promoted a revolutionary ethos: they showed that it was okay for men to cry, and hug, and show their love to guy friends. Leaver praised Barack and Joe's "gentle subversion" of the stereotypes of "male stoicism." (pg 6)
But the book too frequently tips into hagiography to the point of ludicrousness, especially when it comes to Joe Biden. And it's not only occasionally ridiculous, it's also tedious to read, at times downright dangerous and offensive in its defense of his actions (we'll get to that), and unintentionally hilariously melodramatic:
In many ways, their relationship was a thing of beauty. We couldn't turn our eyes away from it. "Beauty," Harvard professor of aesthetics Elaine Scarry has noted, "causes us to gape and suspend all thought." Essayist Robert Boyers, writing about a friend, "the most beautiful man," he'd ever known, said his "beauty inspired intensities of admiration and interest." If that is a definition of beauty, then Barack and Joe together were a beautiful sight. Watching the two of them, many people were mesmerized, and many experienced sensations akin to being in the presence of beauty. Barack and Joe moved us the way beauty moves its admirers. "Beauty quickens. It adrenalizes. It makes the heart beat faster," Scarry wrote in her book On Beauty and Being Just. "It makes life more vivid."
The extraordinary partnership of Barack and Joe did that-- and more. It rose in another way to the level of beauty. Scarry has noted that we marvel at something beautiful because it has a freshness about it, a newness-- to our eyes, it is unprecedented. As a president and vice president who worked harmoniously together, had mutual respect, and even loved each other, Barack and Joe were unlike anything America had ever seen. There was a unique and renegade quality to their friendship that delivered it into the realm of beauty. As Scarry has observed, "It is the very way the beautiful thing fills the mind and breaks all frames that gives the 'never before in the history of the world' feeling." With that sense of beauty, Barack and Joe broke all frames and for eight years filled the American mind with wonder, hope, and optimism. (pg 279)
The author has many and frequent stumbles (we'll get to at least some of those, too) and too often the book goes places it really shouldn't (ditto). The dirt the book suggests it may have doesn't really exist, but then, people aren't reading it for so much the palace gossip such as the nostalgia.
The book is a snapshot of a time, both of the Obama Presidency and the era of nostalgia for the Obama Presidency that followed directly after. But the problem with such snapshots is that they don't tend to age well, and the book is somewhat sloppy even before one takes that into account. Timing is important and this book was the right idea at the right time, it's just a shame such timing was about the only aspect the author nailed.
Notable:
Less a prescience and more a wince since Obama beat him for the Presidency.
The only way the story can get better is if Biden lives out one of Obama's rare gaffes-- something that might be read later as a Freudian slip that revealed a hidden truth. When he was first introducing Biden to the public as his vice-presidential choice in 2008, Obama blew the line: "So let me introduce you to the next president," Obama said before quickly revising his line after catching his error and proclaiming his running mate the next vice president of the United States. (pg xiii)
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The book is a puff piece, and that's supposedly part of its charm. But where it particularly took a turn for me was both Michael Eric Dyson and the author handwaving some seriously troublesome Biden behavior.
As Biden's quest for the Oval Office heats up, all of his previous experiences come back not only to haunt him but, in some ways, to aid him, even the gaffes. After all, the present occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania has so precipitously lowered the presidential bar that Biden's errors-- even his huggy, kissy, "embraceable you" rituals of social intimacy, which must be adapted for the #MeToo era-- may lose their menacing repercussions or, at least, may not be viewed as nearly as badly now as they were then, especially since Biden, as a plainspoken politico who call sit as he see sit, is Trump without the bile, Trump without the viciousness, Trump without the hate, Trump without the unapologetic ignorance, Trump without the racist and misogynistic furor that hugs his presidency to death and squeezes from it most displays of humanity and compassion. (pgs xiii and xiv)
This (from the forward written by Dyson) is correct, of course. Biden is still better than Trump. But the dismissiveness about the "#MeToo era" is more than a little obnoxious, as though this was not a movement (started in 2006 by Tyrana Burke, incidentally) against sexual harassment and assault that was long overdue, but a passing, oversensitive fad, which is incidentally how Donald Trump joked about it to his supporters.
Joe showed his age when he brought up his wife, describing her the way men talked about women in another generation and prompting rebukes from some observers. "Ladies and gentlemen," he told the crowd, "my wife, Jill... is drop-dead gorgeous. My wife, Jill, who you'll meet soon, she also has her doctorate degree, which is a problem." (pg 87)
Joe Biden was sexist about his wife's accomplishments, is what the author meant to say, which given the sexism and nastiness surrounding the current First Lady's job and her degree as Doctor, is truly ironic. We do not need this level of downplaying or dismissiveness, which is insulting and harmful on multiple levels.
Obama, who stayed away from the journalists' Gridiron Club dinner in his first year, joked about his presidency having eased into its fourth quarter. "The fact is, I feel more loose and relaxed than ever," he told the crowd. And the reason for his laid-back vibe led right to his White House partner, whose well-known penchant for hands-on affection would later become controversial as he prepared to enter the 2020 presidential race. "Those Joe Biden shoulder massages," Obama told the room to a wave of laughter, "they're like magic." (pg 243)
Ouch.
As Biden neared an announcement, however, there erupted an explosive controversy that struck at the core of the Biden character. Several women accused the former vice president of rubbing their backs, smelling their hair, kissing their heads, and even rubbing noses with them at public events. The vice president's behavior, the accusers said, was unwanted and made them uncomfortable. Joe, long known for his folksy charm and physical affection with people, was vilified for getting too close. Questions arose about whether Biden was too out of touch in the #MeToo era, which places strict boundaries on acceptable male behavior. In support of Joe and his effusive nature, several women both inside and outside the Obama administration came forward to praise him for the warmth and comfort he had given them in times of need. Yet even before he jumped into the fray of another presidential campaign, the media and some in his own party began to speculate whether Joe was the right Democrat for 2020. (pgs 271 and 272)
Yes, those "strict boundaries" on male behavior! It's so hard not to sexually harass and assault people! Don't these women (never mind that all genders can be sexually harassed, and all genders, including women, can be sexual harassers as well), these humorless sour scolds (compared to the right women who see his folksy charm and harmless physical affection!) just see how all Biden wants to do is love people! He's all heart, let him show it! I mean, if you were all heart and realized you were doing something that made someone uncomfortable, you'd want to stop immediately, right, but I digress.
Also, it wasn't just several women, some of them were young girls, and we have video and photographic proof, these aren't just baseless accusations.
You could make an argument that it's a harmless cultural thing and he truly didn't mean to make anyone uncomfortable without throwing the whole movement against sexual harassment under the bus.
I might add, throwing the whole movement against sexual harassment under the bus is exactly what Obama's successor and Biden's opponent in the 2020 election did.
The author does not comment on the allegation that Biden sexually assaulted one of his staffers in the 1990s.
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When describing a young Obama's ambitions, this troubling story came up, and the author felt it needed to be included.
As far back as 1987, when the twenty-five-year-old Obama was in a significant relationship with a "bright, beautiful, and intense" half-Dutch, half-Japanese woman, Sheila Miyoshi Jager, he discovered what she described as his "calling." He had come to see his destiny as shaped not by his earlier view of himself as a multicultural internationalist of Kenyan-American descent but rather by his identity as an African American. Obama's epiphany would drive him into politics and shatter his relationship with Jagger.
As David Garrow recounted in his book Rising Star, Jager felt that the "resolution of [Obama's] 'black' identity was directed linked to his decision to pursue a political career," and it led to the "drive and desire to become the most powerful person in the world." That goal was possible only if he were married to an African American woman, especially in the political environment of Chicago, where he intended to launch his career.
Jager told Garrow that by 1987, Obama "already had his sights on becoming president." She added, "I remember very specifically that it was then he began to talk about entering politics and his presidential ambitions and conflicts about our worlds being too far apart." Though the couple saw each other off and on over the next several years, the relationship eventually crumbled.
Obama didn't waver from his determination to enter politics with an African American wife. By 1989, he was dating Michelle Robinson and was still consumed by the desire to be the leader of the free world. When Michelle's brother Craig took Obama out to shoot hoops as a kind of family vetting process, Barack passed the basketball test but raised some red flags about his political ambitions. As Craig told journalist David Mendell, "Barack was like, 'Well, I wanna be a politician. You know, maybe I can be president of the United States.' And I said, 'Yeah, yeah, okay, come over and meet my Aunt Gracie-- and don't tell anybody about that.'" (pgs 26 and 27)
A story from a jilted and potentially vengeful ex-girlfriend potentially jealous and/or looking to cash in on her now-mega-famous ex's celebrity and the now-mega famous woman that "replaced" her to become First Lady is... something. But when the book is heavily dependent on optics, why take a swing at one of the most popular modern First Ladies and the most popular Presidential marriages by insinuating that Michelle Obama was a calculated move on the part of the President? I get that the author is probably only trying to contrast the styles of Obama and Biden (Obama being so set on the Presidency that he supposedly even intended his wife to fit the role), but it's quite a misstep and a pretty ugly insinuation.
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One character we hear from a lot in the book is The Daily Show's Jon Stewart, cracking wise and simplifying the news.
The same day as the [spring 2008] speech [about racism given by then-Senator Obama], The Daily Show's Jon Stewart distilled the controversy with his trademark blend of humor and insight. He opened his late-night segment on Obama by noting the existence of an "undercurrent to his candidacy, a whisper if you will," that the candidate was "not of this nation: a foreign name, perhaps a Muslim background." But now America had some clarification. "The good news," Stewart told his viewers, "he's a Christian!...The bad news: this is his pastor."
In the nearly six-minute segment, Stewart showed clips of Reverend Wright hoarsely hollering about American perfidy, interspersed with several comic asides. Stewart concluded the bit with a simple approbation of Obama's speech: "And so at eleven o'clock a.m. on a Tuesday, a prominent politician spoke to Americans about race as though they were adults." (pg 54)
It's a nostalgic reminder of the sway Stewart and the show once held.
"General McChrystal was relieved of his duties because of derogatory comments he made about President Obama and other White House staffers," Leno told his Tonight Show audience. "In fact, when he heard that, Joe Biden was shocked and said, 'What? You can get fired for saying something stupid? What? When'd they start that? Is that new?" (pg 208)
And then there's a reminder about how even in transcribed form, Leno is still tedious and insufferable.
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Interested in some dirt? The book, sort of, has you covered, kinda.
It didn't help Hillary [Clinton]'s chances [of being Obama's running mate] that Michelle Obama was less than enthusiastic about her joining the ticket. Michelle never got over Hillary's explanation to the editorial board of the Sioux Falls Argus Leader in May about why she didn't get out of the race as her prospects against Obama were looking bleak. Hillary tried to make the point that a candidate must keep pushing on into the late states, noting that her husband hadn't locked up his 1992 nomination until the June primary in California. She suggested that the political field can suddenly change with an allusion Michelle never forgave. "We all remember," Hillary told the editors, "Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California." (pg 65)
You may already know this from many, many other books, including the Game Change books, the second of which is name-checked by the author.
An unpleasant interaction with Biden early on in his Presidency is recounted.
As the president stepped back, Joe stepped forward.
"Am I doing this again?" It seemed to be a Biden joke about Chief Justice Roberts.
But the president wasn't playing along. He responded as if Joe really wasn't sure what was going on here.
"For the senior staff," Obama said, unsmiling, looking a little tense.
"For the senior staff," Biden repeated, seeming to play along with the president. Then he tossed out his zinger: "My memory is not as good as Justice Roberts."
Joe, who was often the butt of jokes over his missteps, had been given a rare opportunity, and it seemed he couldn't stop himself from poking fun at someone else for his slipup. The assembled staffers rode with him. A wave of laughter broke out, and a few in the crowd gasped "Ohhh!"
President Obama, stern-faced, shook his head, took a step forward, and tapped his vice president on the elbow as if to say, Stop screwing around, Joe, and get on with it.
The cable news programs swarmed. By drawing attention to the chief justice's error, Biden ironically handed the media an opportunity to portray the joke as Joe's first official gaffe and to hint at tension between him and the president right at the outset of their term. CNN aired a video clip on Anderson Cooper 360°, with senior White House correspondent Ed Henry advising the television audience, "Look at the president's body language. He was not in a laughing mood." (pgs 130 and 131)
Apparently in 2012, there was at least some talk of Obama replacing Biden with Hillary Clinton on the ticket.
President Obama had not prevented his aides from quietly assessing the impact of dumping Biden in favor of Hillary Clinton. Obama advisor David Axelrod had privately argued against any change. "Swapping Clinton for Biden would have been seen as weak and disloyal," he wrote in his memoir.
The quiet discussions had burst into public conversation as far back as October 2010, when Bob Woodward appeared on CNN's John King, USA to pitch his new book, Obama's Wars. Concluding the interview, King asked Woodward to speculate on the possibility of the campaign dropping Biden. "A lot of people think if the president's weak in 2012 he'll have to do a switch there and run with Clinton as his running mate," King said. "In all these conversations when you're doing serious research, [are] things like that coming up?"
Woodward, regarded by many as the best-sourced journalist in Washington, said bluntly, "It's on the table. And some of Hillary Clinton's advisers see it as a real possibility in 2012. President Obama needs some of the women, Latinos, retirees that she did so well with during the 2008 primaries. And so they switch jobs. And [it's] not out of the question."(pg 212)
Moment of silence for Bob Woodward who withheld information received from briefings from the President about how to stop the spread of a deadly pandemic until his book was published.
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Speaking of deadly pandemics, I'll take "Lines That Hit Way Differently in the 2020s"!
The Swine Flu scare in 2009 is almost quaint to read about now.
Fears of a flu pandemic led the news. Commentators reached into history to shock the public about just how bad things could get. The 1918 influenza pandemic, the nervous were reminded, killed at least 50 million people around the world and some 675,000 in the United States. Other pandemics in 1957 and 1968 each wiped out a million people worldwide and a hundred thousand in the United States.
And all of that was before anyone had to face the newest, most worrying, threat: the emergence of avian flu and swine flu. Cases of these exotic strains were turning up in the far reaches of the world and had lately landed in some US cities. (pg 148)
Panic spread online as people turned to the web for information and to speculate on how severe the dangers were. Experts asked the public to refrain from spreading rumors and stoking fears. Nielsen Online reported that web chatter about swine flu was doubling daily on blogs, news sites, and forums. "You cannot catch swine flu by using Twitter," observed Robert Cringely on the PC World website. "But you wouldn't know it by looking at the swirl of misinformation."
Some newspapers tried to tamp down on rising hysteria. In a column looking at five myths about pandemic panic, the Washington Post concluded, "The truth is that the threat is being hyped." The Associated Press, like other news organizations, put out explanatory information. In a question-and-answer format, the AP told readers that they should not expect another pandemic, if one occurred, to replicate the course of the 1918 Spanish flu and kill millions. "That's unlikely," the news service concluded. The piece explained that many treatments now existed that were not available in the first decade of the twentieth century, including antibiotics for secondary infections such as pneumonia, which struck down many victims in the 1918 pandemic. (pg 149)
Ouch.
President Obama, choosing his words carefully, sought to fight the national panic. Appearing before the National Academy of Sciences, he emphasized the crucial role of science and medicine to the prosperity, health, and security of America and announced his commitment to increase investment for research.
In that context, he noted that the Department of Health and Human Services had declared a public health emergency "as a precautionary tool" so resources would be swiftly available if needed. And in his no-drama-Obama tone, the president told the nation: "We are closely monitoring the emerging cases of swine flu in the United States. This is, obviously, a cause for concern and requires a heightened state of alert. But it's not a cause for alarm." (pg 150)
In a time of pent-up anxiety, Joe gave Americans a chance to laugh, even if at his own expense. The night of his Today Show appearance, Jon Stewart on The Daily Show contrasted the styles of Obama and Biden as they spoke to the nation about the flu outbreak, one the calm and reasonable father, the other the wacky alarmist grandfather.
After playing clips of both men, Stewart summed up in his own special way the different advice from the president and the vice president. On Obama, he said, "So there you have it. Use your normal hygienic practices."
Moving on to Biden, Stewart threw up his hands in a crazed panic and screamed his interpretation of Joe's warning: "Live a life of solitude inside a sterilized prison of your own making!" Calming, Stewart gave his mocking appraisal of the White House partnership so far:
"That's Joe Biden doing the vice president's job of making the president look terrific." (pgs 157 and 158)
And there's Jon Stewart again.
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While the author gave the opening floor to Michael Eric Dyson, he wanders into racial territory pretty unfortunately for a white author:
The scene [of the first Obama Inauguration] carried echoes of the 1963 March on Washington: decades ago a throng had gathered at this same location for speeches and music, politics and hope. Then, as now, the star of the show was a charming, idolized black man whose presence and rhetoric brought people to tears. In 1963 Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his now-iconic "I Have a Dream" speech. Gospel singer Mahalia Jackson sang, along with Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, and Peter, Paul, and Mary. A twenty-three-year-old John Lewis spoke in words that were fiery even though he had been ordered to tone them down at the last minute.
Forty-five years later, Barack Obama, president-elect of the United States, was the man pilgrims from across the country came to see. It was his preinaugural celebration-- slicker, full of more pomp than the March on Washington, but occasioned by its civil rights predecessor: if not for King, there would have been no Obama. And if not for Abraham Lincoln, whose marble memorial framed the event, there would have been no King. Thought the president-elect's concert brought out musical royalty-- Bruce Springsteen, James Taylor, John Legend, Stevie Wonder, Beyoncé-- it was King and Lincoln who cast their long shadows over the day. And Obama was deeply conscious of their hovering presence. (pg 119)
Except that that's evaluating King by his current image (which can have a shaky and tenuous relationship to the real man) not by his general image at the time of the '63 March. Also, crediting Abraham Lincoln, a white man, for King and Obama, is troublesome, particularly when you consider that while Lincoln supported abolishing slavery, he was still a racist who looked down on Black people (yes, it's possible to want slavery abolished and still be racist against Black people-- just ask Susan B Anthony).
After the votes were tallied in the 2008 presidential election and Barack Hussein Obama was headed to the White House, some Americans believed the nation had shed in an instant two hundred years of torturous racial history: We were seriously beyond race now. American magically crossed over into a golden age. We were a postracial nation. The New York Times declared across its front page:
"RACIAL BARRIER FALLS IN DECISIVE VICTORY."
Following Obama's inauguration, CNN's Larry King noted the impact of the election on his eight-year-old son. "He now says that he would like to be black," the host told his guest on his show, Larry King Live. "I'm not kidding. He said there's a lot of advantages. Black is in." King asked his guests: "Is this a turning of the tide?"
Obama hoped his election would help America look past the divisiveness of race and move it closer to Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream proclaimed in 1963: that his "four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character." But Obama was also a realist. A long, tumultuous history of racial strife was not washed away by a single- albeit remarkable-- election. (pg 159)
People who believe that racism had been "solved" by Obama's election were not, to put it mildly, paying attention to the dizzying rise of hate groups terrified at the thought of a Black president who frequently defaced Obama to look like an ape, hung nooses prominently, and dialed up their white resentment into what would later become the TEA Party.
That's such a phenomenally ridiculous quote from a ridiculous man like Larry King it truly does not need repeating ("a lot of advantages", educate your child), and I truly wish that people would leave that damn overused and misused MLK quote alone, particularly when they tend to use it to perpetuate colorblind racism.
[Professor Henry Louis] Gates [Jr]'s arrest [in 2009 for breaking into his own home] punctured the dream that America was leaving its racial complexity behind. (pg 164)
Really? That was what punctured it?
Lost amid the heated voices was the fact that [arresting Sergeant James] Crowley had served with distinction for eleven years on the Cambridge force and that he taught other officers at the police academy about the dangers of racial profiling. (pgs 168 and 169)
Sad sigh.
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Obama's journey on the issue [of LGBTQ+ rights] had been long and contradictory. Back in Chicago in 1996, when he ran for an Illinois state senate seat, he told a gay newspaper in a questionnaire that he favored legalizing same-sex marriage. But in 2004 as a US Senate candidate he pulled back on his support, saying marriage was something just for a man and a woman. The politics of the issue on the national stage could be crushing. In 2008, on the presidential campaign trail, he took an official position against a change in marriage rights, though he let it be known among his confidants that his views were evolving.
By 2011-- now in the White House-- he had come around: he privately told his advisors he approved of gay marriage. But for public circulation, his aides wanted only to promote the line that he was "evolving." To some of his progressive followers, Obama's reticence reflected a lack of political courage. In his book The Persistence of the Color Line, Harvard law professor Randall Kennedy expressed his dismay at Obama's hesitation to speak out forcefully on a range of issues, from racial injustice to gay rights. "He has liberal instincts and will effectuate progressive reforms." Kennedy wrote, "but only if he can do so without getting uncomfortably close to what he perceives to be too high a political price." (pg 218)
Just an interesting bit of Obama's trajectory on LGBTQ+ rights. Interestingly, he was the first sitting President to say the term "LGBT Americans" and to specifically mention "bisexual" and "transgender" Americans by name.
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Obama took a ribbon in each hand and from behind Joe, he draped the white enamel star over the vice president's tie, then secured the medal around his neck. With a smile, Barack patted Joe on the shoulders, and Joe turned slowly and shook his head, and the two men embraced in a bro hug. (pg 263)
People, please. Don't do this. No more "bromance", no more "bro hug", just have friends that you hug.
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It's impossible to know, of course, what the outcome might have been if Obama had also encouraged Joe's dream and urged him to mount a campaign. Seeking to guard his legacy, Barack instead placed his bet on Hillary Clinton. Perhaps he saw her as his true successor, the one who would confirm his revolutionary stamp on America's political culture: here was the first black president passing the baton to the first woman president. Change had come to America! Joe Biden, after all, despite his many virtues, was just another white guy, one in a long line of American presidents-- hardly the symbol of the tectonic change that Obama hoped would mark his place in the history books.
"Biden had known for years that the party would want to follow the first African-American president with the first woman president," [political gadfly Maureen] Dowd observed. In her harsh assessment, after Joe decided against a run, Obama presented him with the Medal of Freedom as a kind of consolation prize. "They pushed [Joe] aside, giving him the Medal of Freedom to assuage the dis," she wrote.
Joe Biden was all heart. Barack Obama was all brain. In going with Clinton over Biden, Obama went with the brain instead of the heart. The irony of his decision still lingers. We all know what happened to Hillary Clinton in November 2016. We also know that Joe was strong in those midwestern states that were her undoing. Instead of carrying his legacy into a Clinton presidency, Obama has had to stare largely in silence as Donald Trump has worked to roll back Obama-era achievements in health care, civil rights, worker and consumer safety, immigration, education, and environmental protection. (pg 276)
No book lauding Joe Biden this hard would be complete without a "Biden would've won over Hillary" screed. Do I think he would have? There truly is no way to know and speculative history is truly a fool's errand. But Hillary had a lot Biden didn't and doesn't, as well, something this author doesn't acknowledge in pursuit of his objective. What I suspect the author was trying to do was set up for Biden 2020.
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We do not yet have the distance of history to fully assess the Obama presidency and Barack and Joe's friendship. It is all still too fresh, and the accumulation, indexing, and curating of the administration's papers and those of Obama and Biden are yet to come. Oral histories of those close to the White House are still to be recorded, and thought a number of memoirs already have hit the shelves, no doubt many more will come. There is still much to tell. Obama and Biden, in their own ways, will have an impact on the 2020 presidential election, and how that plays out still remains to be seen. So any rendering of the Obama years at this point remains largely a journalistic enterprise, as they say, "a rough draft of history." (pg 283)
At least he's aware?
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I asked repeatedly for interviews with Barack Obama and Joe Biden, to no avail. I also emailed questions to Obama, at the direction of an aide, but never received replies from the former president. It has seemed curious to me that, despite their busy schedules, Barack and Joe could not find time to discuss their complicated but largely felicitous relationship. I have no doubt that as the years pass and history is allowed to play upon the Obama administration, new truths and interpretations will be unearthed. A writer in my position, so soon after the end of the Obama presidency, can only present the broadest portrait possible from current available information and from insiders willing at this time to offer their reminiscences. (pg 284)
I chuckled a bit at this, the snippiness about two of the most famous people (and both in complicated political positions at the time) not granting the author interviews.
Final Grade: For content outside of the remarks about #metoo, D
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