Vice President Joe Biden
(4 of 5)
It comes down to this, and everyone knows it: Biden's greatest strength is also his greatest weakness. But if you bottle up the effusiveness or eliminate the lack of discipline, you could lose it altogether. "I'm not wearing any funny hats, and I'm not changing my brand," Biden says he told the President when he took the job. Obama was wary once, annoyed when he came to the Senate that Biden, then a leader of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, didn't pay him any mind; on edge when Biden kept fumbling around during the 2008 campaign; and visibly steamed when Biden went off rambling in their early joint White House appearances. But Obama kept his promise. No funny hats, and the Vice President came to whatever meetings he wanted, always got to weigh in. That doesn't mean the President agreed. Biden was against mandating contraception coverage for Catholic institutions, and he wanted to delay the Osama bin Laden raid. But he knows he was heard.
When governing called for hand holding, for someone to win the room, that's when the President deployed his man. Biden went to Iraq eight times after the elections in 2008 to teach everyone how to get along. When the crown prince of Bahrain came to town, Obama asked Biden to do the meeting, and he has done the same with China's likely next President, Xi Jinping. After the Recovery Act passed, Biden got tied to the conference calls because he had the patience to keep hundreds of governors, mayors and county officials out of trouble with several hundred billion dollars in the pipe. And then there is Capitol Hill: Obama still hasn't won those rooms. But he can send Biden to meet with Mitch McConnell over tax cuts. He can have Biden invite Eric Cantor and his wife Diana to dine with him and Jill at the residence. They are all "good guys" to Biden. Pretty much anyone is.
And it never matters just who shows up in the room. One day in mid-April, back in the Vice President's suite of offices, Alex Trebek arrives with his Jeopardy! camera crew. Biden is going to be reading the answers for an upcoming episode--another chance for election-year exposure, another opportunity to win the room. "Alex, if I had your hair, I would be President," Biden says. Then he greets the cameraman. "We are buddies from two minutes ago," he says. He struggles through the backward grammar of Jeopardy! answers and then offers to show Trebek where he signed his name, next to Dick Cheney's, in Teddy Roosevelt's desk.
"I've been assigned six states," Biden tells Trebek when talk turns to the campaign. "Pennsylvania, my home state. Ohio, Iowa, believe it or not, New Hampshire, Florida." This is off message. His press handlers are clenching their teeth. Officially, in Chicago, there are no assignments: Biden campaigns all over the country. But he goes on. "Now they are talking about assigning me either Virginia, Nevada or North Carolina," he says. "We started off with Michigan, but we look like we are in pretty good shape in Michigan."