Barack and Joe

August 1, 2019
The chronicle of a political "bromance." Journalist Levingston (Kennedy and King: The President, the Pastor, and the Battle Over Civil Rights, 2017, etc.), nonfiction book editor of the Washington Post, examines the partnership between Barack Obama and Joe Biden, which, the author gushes, "evolved into a friendship of profound depth, one never before witnessed in the history of the American presidency." His admiration for this relationship serves to justify this book. Unfortunately for Levingston, neither Obama nor Biden consented to interviews or replied to emails, although he did manage to interview sources such as Obama's senior adviser David Axelrod, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, and Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken. From those responses, along with videos, blogs, twitter posts, various media reports, speeches, and the protagonists' memoirs--all public documents--Levingston weaves a lively narrative about an unlikely alliance between the taciturn Obama and gregarious, voluble Biden. After an initially cool assessment of one another, growing mutual respect led Obama to choose Biden for vice president due to his experience and skill working with Congress, his popularity among working-class voters, and their agreement "on matters of international import." Obama, Levingston maintains, admired Biden's personal story: "his character in the face of profound setbacks," his willingness to question "the meaning of life and his place in it," and his "devotion to his family," traits that Obama felt he shared. The author stretches to include any commonalities he can identify--for example, that both men used sports metaphors. Nevertheless, as Levingston recounts their relationship during the campaign's high and low points and throughout eight years of facing economic, social, and military crises, he points out many occasions when the two men seemed close. In particular, Obama's demonstrative sympathy for Biden when his son Beau died of brain cancer is compelling evidence of the sincerity of his friendship and love. But the author is at a loss to explain Obama's reticence in supporting Biden's current campaign for the presidency, and he ends simply by proclaiming the bromance mesmerizing and inspiring. A nostalgic portrait of the last presidency.

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August 12, 2019
President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden were a match made in heaven, according to this starry-eyed study of bromantic leadership. Washington Post books editor Levingston (Kennedy and King) styles them as an odd couple who overcame a rocky courtship to become essential helpmeets, with the gregarious, glad-handing Biden “loosen up” the reserved, calculating Obama while “Obama showed Biden the path to discipline.” Their relationship, he gushes, left Americans “mesmerized, our eyes locked on these two glowing figures as if we were in the presence of beauty.” (As evidence, he cites a woman who said, “I want a man who looks at me like Biden looks at Obama.”) Alas, Levingston’s rhapsodies on the Obama-Biden bond—“crying, laughing, whispering, walking arm-in-arm, eating ice cream”—don’t reveal much of political substance in it. He notes that Obama appreciated (but rejected) Biden’s advice on Afghanistan and cared deeply about Biden’s son Beau’s battle with cancer, but was persistently exasperated with Biden’s verbosity and gaffes and considered dropping him from the 2012 ticket. Biden in turn appears flagrantly unpresidential here, a reckless windbag with few accomplishments and “an emotional mess” when Obama surprised him with the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Levingston’s overripe exercise in Obama nostalgia feels unconvincing.