Leadership and Legacy

The Presidency of Barack Obama

Tom Lansford, Douglas M. Brattebo, Robert P. Watson, Casey Maugh Funderburk, Tom Lansford, Douglas M. Brattebo, Robert P. Watson, Casey Maugh Funderburk

• Publisher: SUNY Press
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781438481869, 9781438481876
• eBook ISBN: 9781438481883
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Applies a variety of scholarly approaches to analyze the long-term impact of President Obama as a leader and policymaker.

Historic, intriguing, and important in so many ways, the Obama presidency will be studied by scholars and students for years to come. With the rise in hyperpartisanship, legislative gridlock, political dysfunction, "fake news," and other negative trends, it is imperative that academicians weigh in with a rigorous assessment of Obama's presidency. This volume applies a variety of scholarly approaches to analyze the impact of Obama as a leader and policymaker. Scholars from disciplines such as political science, history, environmental science, economics, and communication come together to provide an interdisciplinary and wide-ranging appraisal of the president. Across the varied chapters, Obama's leadership is central to understanding the success or failure of his policies and initiatives. The president's decisions and actions are also assessed against the constraints and possibilities created by the modern US political system, rapid changes in technology and society, and shifting patterns in international relations. The result is a book that covers executive leadership, administration, domestic issues, foreign and national security policy, and more, to present a comprehensive review of the Obama legacy.

I

Executive, Administrative,
and Party Leadership

1

The Vice Presidency of Joe Biden

RICHARD M. YON, MICHAEL J. FERRO, AND JEREMY HUNT

Introduction

The office of the vice president has grown considerably since the post-Watergate era, and the influence exercised by the occupants of the office has expanded as well. This is exemplified by the vice presidencies of Walter Mondale, Al Gore, Dick Cheney, and Joe Biden. Cheney’s vice presidency, in particular, represents the height of influence, which precipitated discussions regarding the scope of vice presidential influence. When the Obama-Biden ticket campaigned for office in 2008, the candidates promised a more restrained executive branch, partially in response to the ascendancy of the vice presidency and executive power, which critics argued was characteristic of the Bush years. Acknowledging current national sentiment at the time, Joe Biden stressed the importance of returning the vice presidency back to its historical roots. During the 2008 vice presidential debate, Biden stated:

The vice president of the United States of America is to support the president … and to preside over the Senate, only in a time when in fact there’s a tie vote. The Constitution is explicit. The idea he’s part of the Legislative Branch is a bizarre notion invented by Cheney to aggrandize the power of a unitary executive and look where it has gotten us. It has been very dangerous. (New York Times, 2008)

However, Biden’s vice presidency demonstrated little progress in attaining that standard. Instead, Biden’s tenure in office mirrored other vice presidents of the modern era. He was an instrumental figure in the day-to-day activities of the Obama administration, a trusted advisor and confidant of the president, and ranks among Mondale, Gore, and Cheney as one of the most influential vice presidents.

Biden was a critical advisor, and sometimes indispensable confidant, within Obama’s administration. His hard-hitting approach to public office provided President Obama with a truly unique vice president. This chapter analyzes Vice President Biden’s tenure in office in order to understand how his role evolved. Through his successes and failures, this chapter assesses Biden’s impact on the Obama administration and compares the vice president to his contemporary counterparts. In order to understand the evolution of Joe Biden’s role, one must view the ascent of the modern vice presidency in light of the historical context.

Historical Role of the Modern Vice President

The rise in vice presidential power stems from major changes to society and the responsibilities required of modern presidents. With the president responsible for tackling multiple issues a day, a vice president is frequently expected to alleviate some of the demands on the president, thus providing him or her with new and expanding roles. This has paved the way for the vice president to assume a new role as chief advisor to the president, cementing his or her position as a close presidential confidant (Light, 1984). No longer is the vice president solely a figurehead for ceremonial occasions, but rather a strategic player on both political and policy issues.

At one point, the term “vice presidential influence” served as an oxymoron, as this role was a mere afterthought of the founding fathers. With no legitimate power designated by the founders, the vice presidency was an underused institution. However, the twentieth century witnessed a reevaluation of the office. The vice presidency began to grow in two respects. First, the office began to attract strong-willed individuals with seasoned careers. Great personalities, such as Theodore Roosevelt, were no match for the historically constraining vice presidential office. Second, the vice presidency began assuming modest tasks outside the realm of its constitutional authority to include new informal advisory roles, which helped ease the burden on presidents and provided an outlet for the political talents of the nation’s vice presidents (Goldstein, 2008, p. 375). Aside from acting as the tiebreaking vote in the Senate (one of the few explicit duties listed in the Constitution), the individuals occupying the office became instrumental in decision making, lobbying Congress, and realizing a president’s legislative agenda.

The modern vice presidency relies on three pillars: ceremonial, political, and policy duties (Light, 1984, p. 22). The Great Depression–World War II era launched the policy/political vice presidency. With a multitude of new responsibilities, the president had to rely on his second-in-command in order to accomplish these new tasks. A keystone event happened “in 1947, [when] Congress acknowledged this change by making the vice president a statutory member of the National Security Council” (Goldstein, 2008, p. 375). This was a central shift from the vice presidencies of yesteryear. As presidents were required to be a focal figure on an influx of domestic and international issues, the vice president began assisting the president with the demanding responsibilities he faced. This change provided the vice president with a formal executive duty and permitted him or her to be a key player in foreign policy and national security issues (Light, 1984). The political and policy vice presidency, which began to evolve over the latter part of the twentieth century, helped usher in the advisory role of the vice presidency, perhaps its most important role and one from which it derives most of its influence.

Biden and His Predecessors

Regardless of the new heights it reaches, vice presidential power or influence remains a presidential construct. Even Biden acknowledged that “there is no inherent power in the office of the vice presidency … zero. None. It’s all a reflection … of your relationship with the president” (Trujillo, 2014). Yet, the office of the vice president continues to build an everlasting legacy on the way executive power is perceived. Over the last forty years, the vice presidency has morphed into a position that the president requires, needs, or demands it to be. With no fixed job description, the president utilizes the office to serve his needs and each vice president uses the office to advance themself through their own unique approach and style.

The vice president also has flexibility in defining their role. Since Mondale’s term, the vice president began to assume projects that would define their stance on important issues as a way of bolstering popularity and providing critical experience for a future potential presidential run. “Al Gore pursued niche projects (the environment, Reinventing Government), and Cheney guarded what an aide called the ‘iron issues’ (defense, energy, and national security)” (Osnos, 2014). We now see a reinvented vice president who accepts line item assignments, in order to be a strategic player in the White House’s decision-making process, while creating a springboard for their own presidential ambitions. Still, vice presidents are cautious when it comes to line assignments, fearing that these assignments will distract them from their wider involvement in day-to-day activities and decision making in the White House (Goldstein, 2016; Baumgartner & Crumblin, 2015).

Of recent vice presidents, Walter Mondale in 1984, George H. W. Bush in 1988, and Al Gore in 2000 were able to successfully secure their party’s presidential nomination. In many ways, the vice president is seen as the natural successor for the incumbent president. On the other hand, some vice presidents maintain no political aspirations after serving, such as Cheney who declared from the very beginning zero interest in running for the Republican nomination at the conclusion of the Bush administration. Vice President Dan Quayle was an outlier among recent vice presidents as he “was unable to win a presidential nomination after serving as vice president, and he withdrew early from the race in 1996 and 2000” (Goldstein, 2012). Vice President Biden also appears to be an outlier among recent vice presidents as well. A decision to run for president, in 2016, was dramatically delayed well into the presidential contest, despite the intense pressure he received from supporters to announce his bid and the speculation it drew in the media. After many months of flirting with the idea of a run, Biden announced he would not be a candidate for the presidency due to the tragic and untimely death of his son, Beau Biden (Baker & Haberman, 2015). Despite sitting out the contest in 2016, Biden declared his candidacy for president on April 25, 2019, in which he cast his decision to run as an answer to a “national emergency,” and implored Democrats to “put the task of defeating Mr. Trump above all their other ambitions” (Burns & Martin, 2019). The Biden campaign messages his candidacy in 2020 as “a stabilizing statesman in a tumultuous time” (Flegenheimer, 2019).

From start to finish, Mondale may very well be one of the most important vice presidents because he set the tone for all future occupants of the office. Mondale was not only a critical component in Jimmy Carter’s election victory, but it was his philosophy on the vice presidency that helped Carter advance his policy initiatives and made it possible for other vice presidents, such as Gore, Cheney and Biden, to emerge as strategic players (Goldstein, 2016). “He viewed his role as an advisor, not a decider, and as someone who would help implement the decisions Carter made by persuading various constituencies and governmental figures of their merit” (Goldstein, 2008, p. 379). On international issues, Mondale became the linchpin in promoting Carter’s foreign policy. Mondale understood his role, advancing the causes of the president while never overstepping his boundaries. He worked toward ending racial discrimination in South Africa and promoted peace in the Middle East. Many foreign diplomats considered Mondale a trusted statesman, due to the credentials and contacts he built while in the Senate. His stirring speech to the UN conference on Indochinese refugees in July 1979 won international support. He was well traveled and worked to advance U.S. bilateral cooperation (Goldstein, 2008). His trip to China in 1979 was widely hailed as an important foreign policy venture, normalizing relations and easing tensions between the two powers (Goldstein, 2008, p. 379).

While Mondale may well have been one of the most well-rounded vice presidents, Dick Cheney greatly expanded vice presidential influence. Cheney had the luxury of such increased influence due to his lack of ambition to seek future office (Baker, 2013). Without those constraints, Cheney took on roles from which other vice presidents would have shied away and responsibilities that presidents would be reluctant to give their vice presidents. In an unprecedented move at the time, Cheney led the presidential transition, became the point person for the U.S. government’s response to 9/11, forcefully advocated for greater executive authority to prosecute the war on terror, and was the chief architect of many controversial programs associated with the war on terror, such as the Terrorist Surveillance Program (Yon, 2017). No one could mistake the nature of Cheney’s role in the Bush administration. He was a thoroughly engaged vice president who exercised extraordinary influence.

Biden emulated the style of Lyndon Johnson, taking advantage of his similarly long tenure in Congress, however, he sought to avoid some of the difficulties that Johnson faced (Osnos, 2014). Considering that both served under much younger presidents, Biden and Johnson understood that political relevance was about “getting and staying in the deal.” “In reading ‘The Passage of Power,’ the 2012 volume of Robert Caro’s biography of Johnson, Biden realized just how frustrated Johnson had been: ‘His opinion wasn’t asked on anything, from the Bay of Pigs, to the Cuban missile crisis. He just wasn’t in the deal’ ” (Osnos, 2014). As a result, Biden was determined to be involved in every major decision, and the president ensured that he was included in critical deliberations (Hornick & Levs, 2008). As a result, “He advised on all important decisions from foreign and domestic policy to congressional relations, judicial appointments, and legislative strategy” (Yon, 2017, p. 530).

Biden’s contributions are marked by reinforcing the president’s supremacy rather than maneuvering around it. This is in contrast to Cheney, who was not concerned about his national popularity. Functionally, Cheney had carte blanche to be a key player on an array of domestic and international policy decisions, without concern for a future presidential contest, which was rather liberating for him and President Bush (Osnos, 2014). Biden, on the other hand, infamously moved ahead of President Obama on the issue of gay marriage prior to the 2012 Democratic National Convention, forcing the president’s hand. “He probably got out a little bit over his skis, but out of his generosity of spirit,” Obama told ABC News (Sink, 2012). However, “Biden demonstrated that a vice president can be loyal without surrendering his public identity and becoming lost in the president’s shadow” (Goldstein, 2017).

Public perception has become an important factor in charting vice presidential success. With the rise of vice presidential influence, it is no surprise that the office faces a new level of scrutiny. Since Vice President Mondale, more polls attempt to quantify approval of the vice president. “The growth in polling on the vice president is consistent with the enhanced policy role of the post, as well as its placement in the ambition hierarchy for the presidency” (Cohen, 2001, p. 143). More importantly, the number of polls referencing only the vice president (and excluding the president) illustrates how the office is becoming its own political entity. According to Cohen, from 1977 to 1999 there has been an increase by 41.1 percent of polls dedicated solely to vice presidential matters. The upward trend in vice presidential polls has continued at a steady pace over the last three decades (Cohen, 2001, p. 144). Jody Baumgartner, however, contends that vice presidential approval is not formed independent of the president; rather is heavily influenced by presidential favorability (Baumgartner, 2017).

There is good a priori reason to suspect that people do not make judgments

of the vice president independent of the president. For example, a sizable minority of Americans are unable to identify who the vice president is at any given time. A Gallup poll from January 2000 found that 10 percent of the sample could not identify Vice President Al Gore, then in the eighth year of his vice presidential tenure and running for the Democratic presidential nomination. A 2008 poll found that 15 percent could not name Vice President Dick Cheney in his seventh year in office. In a 2012 poll, 21 percent could not identify Joe Biden as vice president. (Baumgartner, 2017, p. 4)

While vice presidential legacies and public opinion might be inextricably linked to their respective presidents, the continuing trend of increased responsibility, roles, visibility, and influence provides vice presidents with a political stature that escaped many of their predecessors prior to the modern vice presidency.

Nonetheless, vice presidential approval ratings tend to be higher than their presidential counterparts. Looking at Al Gore, “his ratings ranged from a low of 60.7 to a high of 76.2; all are extremely high compared to Bill Clinton’s job approval ratings during the same time period, even though Clinton’s ratings were then quite strong” (Cohen, 2001, p. 145). His contributions to the administration and high public approval gave him the tools necessary to run for president in 2000. Equally important, it is imperative for the vice president to receive t...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction: Their Place in History
• I. Executive, Administrative, and Party Leadership
• II. Domestic Policy
• III. Foreign and Security Policy
• IV. Conclusion
• Appendix A: Grading President Obama
• Appendix B: Barack Obama Biography
• Appendix C: The Obama Administration
• Select Bibliography
• About the Editors
• About the Contributors
• Index
• Back Cover