Vice president’s legacy likely to be forever linked to Obama
Biden expresses pride for what he helped achieve
Vice President Biden really made two announcements Wednesday: The window for him to run for president has closed. His vice presidency has not.
Biden gave a full-throated defense of President Obama’s record in what might have been viewed as a campaign speech if his decision had been different. Biden urged Democrats to run on Obama’s legacy. “I believe that President Obama has led this nation from crisis to recovery,” he said, “and we’re now on the cusp of resurgence. I’m proud to have played a part in that.”
Biden would have been inexorably tied to the Obama legacy had he decided to run. Though Hillary Clinton can oppose Obama’s trade proposals and Syria policy, a Biden campaign would have had no such room to navigate.
Having finally decided at age 72 that he’ll never have a presidential legacy of his own, Biden’s mark on history will forever be tied to that of a president a generation younger than he is. More than any other candidate, he would have had to run for a third term of Obama’s presidency. It would have been almost impossible to imagine a fourth.
“The problem that sitting vice presidents have is that they are pretty much tied to the administration’s policies, and it’s difficult to separate ideologically from an administration you’ve been part of — particularly in Biden’s case when you’ve been a particularly influential part of it,” said Joel Goldstein, a law professor at St. Louis University and expert on the vice presidency.
Instead of distancing himself from his president or his policies — as predecessors George H.W. Bush and Al Gore did when they ran for president — Biden did the opposite. In a forum on the vice presidency Tuesday, Biden said he’s been in lockstep with Obama on every major decision.
“The president and I ideologically have had no disagreement. Zero. None. We’ve had tactical disagreements,” Biden said. “To this day, we are sympatico on all the major issues.”
Then, true to form, Biden created a mini-controversy over his revised account of whether he supported or opposed President Obama’s order to raid Osama bin Laden’s compound in 2011. In the 2012 campaign, he said he was skeptical, but Tuesday, he said he told the president privately to go forward with it.
Obama has called Biden’s vice presidency “one of the more consequential” in history. “It was the best decision that I ever made politically, because I love this guy,” he said in Biden’s hometown of Scranton, Pa., in 2013. “He’s got heart, and he cares about people, and he’s willing to fight for what he believes in, and he’s got some Scranton in him.”
The president has given Biden a diverse portfolio of domestic and foreign responsibilities. Biden has been a top diplomat, middle-class advocate, crime policy expert, congressional relations director and stimulus “sheriff.”
Wednesday, Biden suggested he would take on one more responsibility: “I believe that we need a moon shot in this country to cure cancer. It’s personal,” he said.
“The problem that sitting vice presidents have is that they are pretty much tied to the administration’s policies.”
Joel Goldstein, St. Louis University