A new book about US President Joe Biden, The Last Politician, portrays Biden as an irritable old man and about how there was sometimes strain between him and former president Barack Obama.
In 'The Last Politician: Inside Joe Biden’s White House and the Struggle for America’s Future', Franklin Foer writes about Biden's middle-class upbringing and how it helped foster a resentment of intellectual elitism that shaped his political career and the aforementioned strain with the Harvard-educated Obama, AP reported. The book came out on September 5.
Foer, a staff writer for The Atlantic, says Biden griped with how Obama was unable to say “f—- you” with “the right elongation of vowels and the necessary hardness of consonants; it was how they must curse in the ivory tower.”
Reportedly, the two politicians were very much in sync and had an unspoken code. For instance, if Obama did not want to ask a provocative question during a cabinet meeting, he would simply lean back on his chair, which would be a cue for the then vice president Biden to ask it for him. Also, they made their disagreements known by rolling their eyes at one another.
Despite the differences, when Obama visited the White House in 2022, called Biden an “extraordinary friend and partner who was by my side for eight years.”
In the book, Foer noted that Biden wanted his relationship with current Vice President Kamala Harris to be the opposite of what his relationship was with Obama, where, Obama reportedly did not accord him with respect.
“He made a point of referring to her as the vice president, as opposed to my vice president. He was a stickler for asking her opinion in meetings—and making sure that her office was kept in the loop,” Foer wrote in the book.
The book also notes that Biden, especially during his first two years in office, flip-flopped a lot before signing on a lot of policies, that would go on to cement his legacy. Reportedly, Biden has often complained of tiredness to his friends in private.
In the book, Foer also details Harris' struggles to carve out a role for herself, and notes that she may have hurt her own cause in that area, initially asking to be in charge of relations with Scandinavia because it was “away from the spotlight,” AP reported.
Foer, in the meantime, on Monday, said that it “wouldn’t be a total shock” if the president cancels his re-election bid by the end of the year, The Guardian reported. Referring to the reporter who broke the Watergate scandal said, “it doesn’t take Bob Woodward to understand that Joe Biden is old.”
