The Washington Post Obama to visit White House as Biden seeks a reset

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When Joe Biden campaigned for president in 2020, Barack Obama was rarely at his side. In Biden’s time in the White House, he has not headlined an event with the former president. Overall, Biden and Obama have seen little of each other recently, despite an ostensibly close relationship and having residences about two miles apart.

That will change Tuesday afternoon, when Obama steps into the White House for the first time since he vacated the premises in 2017, making way for the newly elected Donald Trump.

© Andrew Harnik/AP Barack Obama campaigns with Joe Biden in Flint, Mich., in late October 2020.The immediate reason for Tuesday’s visit is for Obama to witness President Biden signing an executive order strengthening the Affordable Care Act, Obama’s landmark domestic achievement. But Obama’s appearance will also take place against the backdrop of low poll numbers for Biden, dim electoral prospects for Democrats and an urgent search for a spark by party leaders.

The public reintroduction of the party’s popular former leader may not be a coincidence, and it could signal a higher profile for Obama in coming months as Biden and the Democrats seek to focus attention on their efforts to help ordinary Americans.

“The runaway top issue on people’s minds is cost of living, and health care is at the top of this list,” said David Axelrod, who was Obama’s chief political adviser. “If you want to get attention on this issue, bringing Obama back for the first time in a year and a half to the White House to talk about what they’ve done together, and what he is trying to do, is a good strategic move.”

With Russia’s invasion of Ukraine dominating the headlines for weeks, Biden has struggled to focus public attention on his domestic agenda. Yet Americans have been telling pollsters that inflation is their top concern, and a clear majority say they want Biden to make handling it a priority.

In response, the White House has pumped out a steady stream of announcements about Biden’s efforts to ease supply bottlenecks, fight monopolies and ease fuel prices by releasing oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. But such announcements have often been eclipsed by news of the war in Ukraine, Trump’s recent doings or the confirmation process for Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson.

Obama, 60, and Biden, 79, have long had a complex relationship. When Obama chose Biden as his running mate in 2008, it gave Obama much-needed stature while reviving Biden’s national profile. The two were famously close in the White House, but as Obama’s presidency drew to a close, many believed Obama wanted Hillary Clinton as his would-be successor, to the frustration of Biden’s circle.

After Biden launched his own presidential run in 2019, he rarely appeared with Obama, in part because of the coronavirus but also to avoid being overshadowed — a pattern that has continued during Biden’s first year-plus in office. But now, as Democrats confront a difficult landscape in the November midterms, Obama’s appeal looms large, especially his ability to generate excitement among the party faithful and his popularity among Black voters.

Read: Obama’s address at John Lewis’s funeral

Republicans, meanwhile, have been aggressively attacking Biden and the Democrats over rising prices, as well as rising crime and other quality-of-life issues. Over the weekend, Trump repeatedly mentioned high gas costs during a lengthy rally in Michigan, and the GOP has even been registering voters at gas stations, seeing them as a place where irritated consumers can be motivated to vote for change.

Other world leaders are facing a similar dynamic. French President Emmanuel Macron has, like Biden, thrown himself into efforts to help Ukraine and punish Russia. But in recent days far-right candidate Marine Le Pen has begun rising in the polls as France has struggled with some of the same inflationary issues the United States is facing.

Biden’s effort to intensify his message on inflation is not limited to Obama’s appearance. On Monday, he held a splashy event featuring a set of Mack trucks on the South Lawn of the White House. The gleaming machines served as an eye-catching backdrop for Biden’s comments on his efforts to attract more workers to the trucking industry, which is facing a labor shortage contributing to supply chain delays and high prices.

“I thought I was going to get to drive one of these suckers today,” Biden quipped Monday.

He outlined various ways his administration is easing the path for would-be drivers to obtain commercial licenses and become truckers, including an initiative aimed at military veterans. “If you can handle a tank, if you can handle an armored personnel carrier, you sure in hell can handle one of these suckers,” Biden said, indicating the hulking trucks on the White House lawn.

But the bigger star power comes Tuesday afternoon, when Biden and Obama will deliver joint remarks in the Rose Garden.

While White House aides are billing the event as a “celebration” of the Affordable Care Act’s success, it does not mark any particular anniversary or milestone. The ACA was signed into law on March 23, 2010, so Tuesday will mark 12 years and 13 days since it was launched.

Kathleen Sebelius, who was Obama’s secretary of health and human services secretary when the ACA passed Congress, will also attend Tuesday’s ceremony. She said Biden will sign an executive order designed to fix a problem with the legislation — known as the “family glitch” — that has raised coverage costs for many Americans because of its method of calculating whether a family qualifies for subsidies.

Sebelius said that she saw Obama and Biden work together closely to pass the health-care law and that it was clear they had a strong bond. “I saw this very close and collaborative working relationship,” Sebelius said in an interview. “I never saw the vice president hold back any thoughts or ideas.”

Still, she said it is not surprising that the two men have not appeared together in public since Biden took office, given the tradition that former presidents defer to incumbents. “President Obama has been very careful about ‘one president at a time,’” Sebelius said.

Another person familiar with the dynamic, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to comment about a sensitive relationship, said that Obama did not want to be seen as stealing any of Biden’s thunder.

Biden and Obama speak regularly, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Monday. “They are real friends, not just Washington friends,” Psaki said, referring to the tendency of Washington politicians to claim a close friendship with a variety of casual associates.

Psaki said the two also plan to have lunch Tuesday, resurrecting a weekly tradition from when Obama was in the White House. “It’s not a relationship of obligation,” Psaki said Monday. “It’s one where they developed a deep and close friendship through the course of their time serving together.”

The Biden-Obama conversations span personal issues, family concerns, business ideas and work, according to a person familiar with their discussions who was not authorized to talk about them and spoke on the condition of anonymity. People close to both men say Obama plays an important role for Biden, who has surrounded himself with longtime staff members but does not have a wide circle of peers around who can give him blunt advice.

During the campaign, Obama called Biden at pivotal moments, one person said, including just before a Democratic debate in South Carolina that proved a turning point in Biden’s presidential run.

Since entering the White House, Biden has given Obama advance notice of announcements such as his decision in April 2021 that he intended pull all troops out of Afghanistan — a notable sign of respect in Washington — and asked for the former president’s support. Obama complied, issuing a statement praising Biden’s “bold leadership” and calling it “the right decision.”

In addition, Obama, at the behest of the White House, has made a half-dozen appearances promoting coronavirus vaccination, including two events with Anthony S. Fauci, Biden’s top medical adviser, and one with basketball star Shaquille O’Neal.

Beyond that, the state of the Biden-Obama relationship is not always evident to the public. Biden has held few social events at the White House that have been disclosed publicly. He has occasionally dined out in Washington, but the persistence of the pandemic has complicated socializing during most of his presidency.

And unlike Obama, who had school-age children here and made Washington his home, Biden spends most of his weekends in Wilmington, Del., which he still considers his main base.

During the 2020 primaries, Biden often stressed his relationship with Obama as he courted Black voters, who came out in droves to support him. Biden was careful to refer to his tenure in the “Obama-Biden” administration. In August 2016, Biden posted a photo of two friendship bracelets that read “Joe” and “Barack” on a social media account.

“A brother to me, a best friend forever,” Biden wrote alongside the photo.

Still, relationships between current and former presidents can be publicly awkward, in part because the popularity of a former White House occupant often grows as he enters the gauzy role of elder statesman, while the incumbent is still wrestling with the messy, divisive reality of politics.

Axelrod recalled that during the Obama era, former president Bill Clinton stopped by the White House at a time when Obama was involved in urgent legislative negotiations. The two presidents wandered in the press room and said they wanted to speak with reporters.

Robert Gibbs, who was then Obama’s White House press secretary, raised objections because there had been no time to prep the president and the former president, Axelrod recalled.

Obama and Clinton went out into the briefing room anyway. After fielding a few questions, Obama departed for an event — leaving Clinton on the podium handling the press queries alone. Axelrod said the episode raised questions at the time, with some analysts criticizing the optics of leaving Clinton center stage at the White House lectern while Obama was absent.

“He wasn’t meeting with his predecessors a lot,” Axelrod said of Obama’s habits. “Presidents are busy.”

Obama to visit White House as Biden seeks a reset (msn.com)