Vice President Joe Biden never apologized to President Obama for getting a "bit over his skis" in endorsing gay marriage before the president did -- and according to very senior White House sources, Obama didn't ask for or want an apology from Biden.
But google "Joe Biden", "apology" and "gay." On May 10, 2012 the official White House position -- as fed to the media -- was that Joe Biden apologized to the president.
What did happen is that Obama White House staff and campaign advisers went nuts and angrily denounced Biden for triggering what they thought would be a gay marriage political nightmare after comments on a Sunday morning talk show. Jay Carney, spokesman for the president and former spokesman for Biden, was widely acknowledged to be an exception to the tension and was working hard to bridge the mutually angry camps.
The heat was so strong that Biden staff scrambled to construct a gesture, which was a falsehood, that Biden apologized to the president for getting ahead of him on gay stuff. Biden staff put out word that Biden apologized -- but the truth of this matter is that never happened.
Or did it? Biden himself never said "sorry" to the president for his principled stand on the leading civil rights issue of the time. That would be a bit like Lyndon Johnson tucking it in and apologizing to JFK for being about nine steps ahead of the Kennedy clan on black civil rights in the country (which LBJ was).
However, when staff do something in the name of the principal for whom they work -- the question is whether that constitutes truth or not. In political or financial scandals, one of the techniques that politicians frequently use is to blame the transgression on an aide working for the pol, arguing that the principal had no knowledge of the illegal act. However, when things are going smoothly and well, Senators and Congressmen count on their aides to generate legislative and political successes for which they can take credit in their own name.
Very little in the Congressional Record, for that matter, that is the digest of all that officially transpires on the floor of the House of Representatives and Senate, actually happens. There are tributes, commendations, long speeches that read as if they were given and which appear in the record -- but even a bleary-eyed replay of C-Span video will never yield the commentary being given.
Typically, a legislative assistant will write a speech on some topic for his boss, a senator or representative, let's say on the subject of stopping Iran's nuclear program. Then the legislative director will approve the speech, and it will be transmitted by the staff member down to the floor clerk for inclusion in the Congressional Record. The senator or House member, on most occasions, never sees the commentary that will appear under his or her name. The system works on trust and the subordinated credentialing of staff who are given the authority to speak, think and write in the name of their employer.
But when it comes to communications between the president of the United States and the vice president -- two people who meet regularly and privately and who have a 'deal' that Biden will be the last person in the room with Obama when major controversial issues, particularly of war and peace are discussed -- the rules should be different, particularly when it comes to personal beefs or grievances between them.
After Biden made his comments saying that he was "absolutely comfortable" with gay marriage on NBC's Meet the Press and a firestorm erupted over the gap between Biden's gay-hugging humanity and Obama's 'evolving' views on the matter, a senior White House official confided that Biden was one of the few people aware of the president's thinking on the matter -- and that what was at issue was not that Biden was out of sync with the president substantively but rather the political timing of the president's announcement.
In my view, Biden said nothing to change or disrupt Obama's position, which was then official White House policy -- but anyone who knows Joe Biden and his complete, authentic affection for both straight and gay couples, married or not, knows that he held the views which he articulated. Similarly, Vice President Cheney was ahead of George W. Bush on gay marriage -- arguing in contrast to Bush that states should govern the issue, not the federal government.
The good thing is that no matter how they got there, both Joe Biden and Barack Obama now publicly endorse gay marriage. This was not true -- and was painfully apparent when New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, introduced to standing ovation craziness by Sarah Jessica Parker at last year's Human Rights Campaign Dinner, blasted by implication President Obama's stance supporting civil unions over 'marriage.'
But at another level, when the history of gay rights and the Obama administration is written and the president's pivotal leadership on Don't Ask Don't Tell is explored, along with the Obama team's decision to abandon legal defense of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), and the president's important endorsement of gay marriage, it will be contestable (and wrong) to include the vignette that Biden apologized to Obama for a principled and important civil rights view that Biden personally held.
What happened and can be written is that Biden's staff apologized to Obama's staff -- and whether such fabricated truth is really truth is worthy of debate.
If he reads this or is pushed by the media or public on it again (think presidential debates) Obama should give a full-throated embrace of his vice president and his leadership on gay issues and should apologize for these staff theatrics that sullied Obama's step forward.
Frankly, I applaud Obama's gay marriage evolution, but when he should have looked BIG for the move -- this apology kabuki backfired and made the president look smaller and more petty than he should have appeared at such a historic moment for his presidency and the nation.
-- Steve Clemons is Washington Editor at Large at The Atlantic, where this post first appeared. Clemons can be followed on Twitter at @SCClemons
Follow Steve Clemons on Twitter: www.twitter.com/SCClemons
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Within a day or two, we then get this bold statement, from Biden, about gay marriage. Here, Biden is the bold one, the one willing to take chances and make a stand. President Obama didn't appear angry about it, and may even figured that he owed Biden one.
It great that he evolvednow; however, I take issue with the fact that he 1) did so at a time when he has no responsibility to constituents and will have little if any back lash for his statements and 2) his coming out ahead of the President will lead some (this author included) to believe that Biden evoleved before the President.
I'm sure that they had conversations and (de)briefings ahead of his interview and while I'd like to think that this was altruistic, the timing and the way that it was handled was messy. However, I'm glad that it happened so that the fight for ME can move forward and we can then focus on LGBTQ homelessness, issues facing Trans youth and adults...
So I don't have a problem with the way Biden and Obama handled this. You can't change a lifetime of programming overnight and they're both doing fine in their own time. They don't have to be in the exact same place when it comes to this subject, and Obama is clearly more evolved than Romney and Bush.
during his interview with Robin Roberts, President Obama stated that Vice President Joe Biden "probably got out a little bit over his skis, but out of generosity and spirit. Would I have preferred to have done this [announced his support of marriage equality] in my own way, in my own terms, without I think there being a lot of notice to everybody? Sure. But all’s well that ends well."
It remains to be seen if the struggle for marriage equality will end well, but *clearly* Obama ended this manufactured brouhaha quite well. Time will show, I feel certain, that Obama was the first statesman to hold the presidency after it was held for a very long time by mere politicians.
Lune
He was *supposed* to float that trial balloon, so they could see the reactions.
Leading up to the announcement, it had been clear that this Administration had already embraced everything about their ultimate 'evolved' position on "gay marriage", except for the last word, "marriage".
It's also clear that POTUS and VPOTUS like each other, personally.
Now, VP Biden is not a man to apologize for his deeply felt convictions -- and if you saw how he answered the question, then you'd know that those were words sincerely expressed.
On the other hand, President Obama is a man who rarely seems to get mad -- even at his enemies, and even when they intentionally go out of their way to do him dirt.
I quibble a little bit with the author, about the whole 'apology' myth making the POTUS seem 'petty'. I think that, when history is written, nobody is going to give that a second thought -- if they mention it at all.
This whole "apology" thing sounds more like two feuding staffs, nothing more.
And who knows? Maybe there is just a bit of relief that everything turned out mostly ok?
If the kabuki of politics is so disconcerting that speculation is required to be at ease, please accept my apology for the process.
Biden doesn't seem to need one, in my view, however it actually played out.