Articles

Biden’s Bitterness Came Back to Bite Him

January 09, 2025
3bf6cecd25a3ca4f56d8ac6b8026a81b

Joe Biden’s presidency will end in a few days. But an intriguing subplot of the Biden years will endure: his animosity and that of his key lieutenants toward Barack Obama and his team.

The rupture between America’s 44th and 46th presidents began nearly a decade ago. Mr. Biden’s 2017 memoir, “Promise Me, Dad,” shows his disappointment—even anger—at how Mr. Obama and his advisers treated him before the 2016 presidential primaries. 

The memoir portrays Mr. Obama as duplicitous. He counseled his vice president on running even though, as Mr. Biden writes, Mr. Obama “had concluded that Hillary Clinton was almost certain to be the nominee, which was good by him.”

When Mr. Obama suggested Mr. Biden talk to the president’s pollster and strategist about a memo Biden aides prepared on a possible 2016 bid, he promised Mr. Biden that “they could be trusted to keep it quiet.” Mr. Biden writes, “I guess he didn’t know that at least one of them was already helping Hillary.” 

Later, Mr. Obama tried dissuading Mr. Biden by saying, “I think I can do more [after the White House] than I was able to do as president.” According to Mr. Biden, Mr. Obama then asked, “Joe, are you focused on that?” In response, Mr. Biden writes that he thought “giving up on the presidential race would be like saying we were giving up on Beau,” his elder son, who had wanted his father to run and was losing his battle with brain cancer.

Mr. Biden felt Mr. Obama wasn’t forthcoming. At one point, “I found myself saying, ‘Look, Mr. President, I understand if you’ve made an explicit commitment to Hillary and to Bill Clinton.’ ” In August 2015, as the vice president closed on a decision, he writes, “the president must have been getting an earful from his political team—a few of whom were actively working for Hillary’s nomination”—because Mr. Obama raised the subject in his next private meeting with Mr. Biden. “The president was not encouraging,” Mr. Biden writes tersely.

Being passed over by Mr. Obama for Mrs. Clinton had consequences for Mr. Biden’s mindset and that of his closest aides. Mr. Biden ran in 2020 on the promise that he’d be a transitional figure who would settle things down after the turbulence of Donald Trump. He signaled that he would work with both parties and after one term give way to a new generation. Normalcy was his message, moderation his promised method.

Instead, Mr. Biden unleashed a flood of progressive policies, including the American Rescue Plan, the Inflation Reduction Act and a flurry of costly, intrusive regulations. He proposed the Build Back Better Act, so expensive and sprawling even a Democratic Senate wouldn’t approve it. He claimed credit for a bipartisan infrastructure bill that the White House delayed passing, fearing it would undermine Build Back Better. He also took credit for a chip-manufacturing bill that was really the work of a bipartisan pair of senators.

It’s telling that as this radical policy unrolled, White House aides and outside allies began calling Mr. Biden the most transformational president since Lyndon B. Johnson or maybe even Franklin D. Roosevelt. This was a direct slap at Mr. Obama and the Clintons. 

But Mr. Biden’s bitterness endured. In 2023, when former Obama adviser David Axelrod raised questions about whether Mr. Biden should run again, an anonymous source let the press know Mr. Biden had called him a “prick.” If Mr. Biden didn’t like the advice, he should have ignored it. His crude name calling—and its leaking—diminished him, not Mr. Axelrod.

Read More at the WSJ

Related Article

3d5ac0bdda3c1ed0d606cff5bd41a92c
October 09, 2025 |
Article
There’s so much happening, it’s overwhelming—for news junkies watching events unfold and for the White House trying to manage it all. ...
00a48e374a896626bf94161e12457fd0
September 25, 2025 |
Article
It looks as if we’ll have another government shutdown. On Friday House Republicans passed a continuing resolution to fund the government. In response, Senate Democrats demanded that the resolution extend Biden-era ObamaCare subsidies that soon expire. ...
D1cab95d81fde6d0a02f815b78ac93b8
September 18, 2025 |
Article
It has been a sad, sickening week for America. Our country witnessed a terrible event. A young man was gunned down doing what he loved—debating all comers on a college campus on behalf of his passionately held beliefs. ...
4cef5f0e9ca9889e328da780a78d0636
September 11, 2025 |
Article
Mike Rogers seeks to win the party a seat for the first time since 1994. ...
Button karlsbooks
Button readinglist
Button nextapperance