The FRONTLINE Interviews
Antony Blinken
Biden Campaign Adviser
Antony Blinken served as national security adviser to Vice President Joe Biden from 2009 to 2013. He currently serves as an adviser to Biden’s 2020 presidential campaign.
The following interview was conducted by FRONTLINE’s Jim Gilmore on July 9, 2020. It has been edited for clarity and length.
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Obama and Biden’s Relationship
Let’s start first with when Obama and Biden are both in the Senate.You’ve talked about the fact that to some extent there was a little bit of a gulf between the two of them, and I want you to talk a little bit about what the relationship was before the administration in the Senate.How did they deal with each other?What did they think of each other?
The truth is, they didn’t know each other well at all.Certainly before then-Sen. Obama got to the Senate, I don’t think they knew each other particularly well.And then, even once he was in the Senate, and even though they were on the same committee—the committee that Sen. Biden was leading as the lead Democrat, the Foreign Relations Committee, and that Sen. Obama joined—at the end of the day they didn’t spend that much time together because the 2008 election season began, and both of them were off and running.
And so, as it happened, there just wasn’t that much time together in the Senate.And then of course, they were competing for the Democratic nomination, so that builds in its own aspect of the relationship.
I think at one point you said Obama came in and wasn’t as big of an institutionalist as the vice president, or to-be vice president.And Obama at one point would listen to Biden in the committee and roll his eyes because he felt he talked too much.Talk a little bit about that, the initial view of Biden from Obama’s point of view, a view that of course will change dramatically once they actually know each other.
Look, my sense is that Sen. Obama had some impatience with the institution and everything that went along with it.And of course, Sen. Biden has spent his entire career in that institution; he knew it inside out, and he had a certain reverence for it.And so I think there was a difference in attitude, a difference in approach.And it could be that had Sen. Obama stayed in the Senate, not run for president, not become president, maybe he would have evolved in that direction.Who knows?But certainly at the time, there was just a different attitude toward the institution itself, on the one hand Sen. Biden, who had literally grown up in that institution, and Sen. Obama coming in, new to it, wanting to get things done, and maybe feeling a little frustrated at the pace of getting things done in the Senate.
Biden’s 2008 Presidential Bid
The 2008 campaign, you worked on the campaign for Biden.Talk a little bit about it.It didn’t last long for Biden.Why was he running?What drew him to run again?And what happened?Why was it such a short-lived experience?
Well, look, there was a pretty remarkable field in 2008 when you go back and look.And of course, it ultimately came down to Sen. Obama and Sen. Clinton, but there were other remarkable folks running that year.I think given everything we’d experienced as a country, particularly in Iraq, the understanding, the knowledge, the leadership that Sen. Biden had exhibited in foreign affairs, he thought was appropriate to the time, and he thought that he could be the person to help get us out of some of the engagements we were mired in.That was one of the elements that was so important to him.
In retrospect, now, I think the Bush years look relatively quiescent compared to what we’re experiencing under President Trump.But there was also a lot of turbulence in society, and I think the vice—then-Sen. Biden believed that he had capacity to bring people together at a time when some of these divisions were already starting to show.
So that’s what was driving him.But he ran headlong into two phenomenal candidates in Sen. Obama and Sen.Clinton, and both had extraordinary campaigns.I remember on one occasion, it was the last debate of the primary season, and Sen. Biden and one of the other terrific candidates, Sen.Chris Dodd, neither really had a lot of money left in the bank, so they decided to pool their resources and rent a plane together to get up to New Hampshire, the site of the last debate.And I happened to be with Sen. Biden.
So we get to the airport, and there’s our plane, a sort of ancient, twin-engine propeller, waiting for us.And next to it is a gleaming jet, a Gulfstream.And we were kind of wondering who was going to get into the Gulfstream.And as we were waiting to get into our plane, Sen. Biden—Sen. Obama, excuse me, comes walking along, jacket over his shoulder, waves at Sen. Dodd and Sen. Biden, and gets into the gleaming Gulfstream.So that might have been a sign of things to come.
After Iowa, it’s sort of over quickly.What’s the view amongst the campaign?Is this a feeling of it wasn’t our time; there were mistakes made; there will be another time?What was the view when the senator decided to end the campaign for himself?
Look, I think there was a view that he had been facing a phenomenon in Sen. Obama, and of course, in another way, another phenomenon really in Sen. Clinton.And so in that sense, yeah, maybe it just wasn’t his time.Obviously there was deep disappointment.Anyone who runs, who makes that investment, who puts themselves out there as a candidate is going to feel a deep sense of disappointment.
But at the end of the day, it looked like there were very powerful, historical forces and two incredibly compelling candidates who were making it into the final round, so he accepted that very quickly.
But there was kind of an interesting inflection point.Sometime—I’m trying to remember the exact circumstance, and it escapes me, but Sen. Obama sometime, I think in February or so, was either—maybe it was the Selma anniversary.I can’t remember what the anniversary was, but he gave a speech on race relations, and it was mesmerizing.I remember it very well because I happened to be—it was a long Senate recess.I was off with my wife visiting some friends in Arizona, and we had it on the TV as we were getting ready to leave for the airport to go home, and we almost missed our flight because it was so compelling.
Anyway, the next day I got back to the Senate, and Sen. Biden called me and said, “Did you happen to hear Obama’s speech yesterday?”And I said, “Yes, as a matter of fact, I did.”And he said, “I think that is the finest speech I’ve ever heard from an American politician.”And you could see, there was almost like a light switch that was flipped, and the, I think, respect that Sen. Biden had for Obama, which was already pretty high, really shot up; that somehow it spoke to him, it resonated with him.I think he saw the extraordinary talent that Sen. Obama possessed.
Then, after that, they would talk on a fairly regular basis.And then you get to the summer, and all of a sudden, lots of speculation about who’s going to be the running mate.
Obama Selects Biden as His Running Mate
When he gets the nomination, and Biden gets a call, are you in communication with Biden at that point?Were you involved in any of the discussions about what Biden was going to decide to do?
Yeah, a number of us were in different ways, different levels of intensity.But yeah, certainly he talked to me about the overtures he was getting.I think he expressed initially a fair bit of skepticism about whether he was the right guy to be the running mate.He genuinely thought that he could better serve a President Obama in the Senate as one of the leading Democrats running the Foreign Relations Committee, being a leader of the party, helping to get an agenda through.And I guess he was asking himself questions about what it would like—what it would be like to be the number two.He had been, in effect, in control of his own agenda, his own life as a senator; everyone is—of the 100 senators, everyone’s their own boss.
And so, I think those questions were in his mind.And it took a little bit of work for Sen. Obama to convince him to first put himself into consideration, and then even when it was down to the last three, to commit to taking the job, if offered.
Why does he take it?
So, I think the call of history was just too powerful.His family said to him, and he’s talked about this, that if Barack Obama believed that Joe Biden was the right guy to be his running mate, to help him win the election and then to help him govern, how could he say no to that?How could he say no to being someone who would help the first African American president be elected and then govern the country?That was the call of history, and it was very, very strong.And ultimately I think that’s what decided him.
Why does Obama pick Joe?What does Joe Biden, Sen. Joe Biden, bring to the party?
Look, I think there are a number of things.First, of course, the foreign policy experience over several decades, something that then-Sen. Obama didn’t have, certainly not to the same extent.Second, we were talking about it before: Given Sen. Biden’s knowledge of and reverence for Congress and the Senate, the institution, I think Sen. Obama knew that having a partner who could navigate and who could help him get an agenda through was something vital to have.
Then I think, look, just the picture of a newcomer married to someone with deep experience, who understood Washington, knew how it worked, that made for a good combination.And I think, certainly from a—as a political calculation, someone who had demonstrable appeal with, for example, white working-class voters, that had to be a factor, too.
But mostly, look, I think when you’re choosing someone to be your running mate and you’re choosing someone who’s going to be your vice president, if you’re elected, you’re thinking about, who am I going to be comfortable governing with?Who am I going to be comfortable seeing three, four, five times a day?Because that was the nature of the relationship they’d already decided.That was critical, I think, to the vice president, to Vice President Biden agreeing to join the ticket—what the partnership would actually look like in practice.
And so Sen. Obama, knowing that, knowing the commitments he’d made to have that kind of relationship, had to be comfortable with someone who was going to be very much in his life every single day.
It’s been written about the rocky relationship to begin with, the fact that Joe speaks from the heart, sometimes out of pocket in a way that is not expected.And so there’s the famous story of the fact that he said: “Well, of course, Obama will be tested early on.Mistakes will be made.”Tell a little bit about that story, because that’s one you were involved with, with a conversation about Sen. Biden going to Obama at some point.Tell us that story and what it means.
It came pretty late in the campaign.I think it was at some point in maybe mid-October.And we were doing pretty well.And of course, you’re trying to first do no harm.And the vice president was barn—then-Sen. Biden was barnstorming the country on behalf of the ticket and spending time in, particularly in places like Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Florida, but on this particular occasion I think we were out on the West Coast.
And he had a fundraising event.He talked about the likelihood that President Obama would be tested, and tested late at night and early.And that, of course, to some, raised concerns about someone who was relatively inexperienced taking the top job.And the truth of the matter is, the—Sen. Biden was—he was under the weather that particular day, and I think that might have contributed to it.
But he said what he said, and that was not particularly happily received by some of my campaign colleagues in Chicago.And I think ultimately—and of course, he talked to Sen. Obama about it.But ultimately, it was his recognition that maybe that had been the wrong thing to say at the wrong time, and acknowledging that personally to Sen. Obama, that’s—that was the critical thing.And that’s what he did, and it was done.Finished.Over.
Biden’s Authenticity
The question of—some people will say one of the things which you either love or you don’t understand about the man is that he talks a lot; that he knows a lot, and he will brief you and tell you about it at length.And you at some point, which I think was very interesting to hear, is that his greatest strength is his greatest weakness, or his greatest weakness is his greatest strength.Explain that—what it says about him, the man that you know and the real reason for this that people need to understand or certainly grow to understand when they know who the man is.
More than maybe any politician I’ve ever known in my 25 years in Washington, with Joe Biden, what you see is what you get.And the person that he is in public is the very same person he is in private.There is no difference.There is no public persona that’s different than the private persona, and that’s an incredibly powerful thing, because it goes to this word that we talk about all the time: authenticity.He is who he is.He says what he thinks.And I think people recognize that.
And so, sure, if sometimes he says what he thinks in an inopportune way or at an inopportune time, which was the famous definition by the great journalist Michael Kinsley of the Washington gaffe—it’s not saying something that’s wrong; it’s saying something that’s right but maybe at the wrong time or the wrong place.
People, I think, feel that they have before them someone who is genuine, who’s authentic, who is speaking from his heart as well as from his mind.And that’s a very, very powerful asset to have as a politician.People take from that that he understands their problems.He may not be able to fix everyone, and that’s not necessarily the role of government to fix everything, but you’ve got to start by understanding.And that’s what he conveys, I think, because of who he is and the fact that there’s no daylight between who he is in private and who he is in public.
Biden as Vice President
One of the things you talk about is the fact that in some ways the president wanted him to be the skunk at the picnic, to keep people honest.In debates in the Oval Office and such, there was a certain role that he was playing, that there was a simpatico between the two of them in how they dealt with things to achieve the best solutions.Talk a little bit about that part of the relationship and how he filled a role that was so important for the president.
Well, I’d say two things.First, more generally, my sense is there were some of my friends around Sen. Obama, then President Obama, who were not quite sure at the beginning, how is the vice president going to be in the No. 2 role?He’s always been his boss; how’s that going to work out?And I think what they, what the president quickly understood, to the extent there was still any doubt about that, was that this was a guy who has my back, who is constantly looking about for me.And there were a few sort of episodes, including one where the vice president was meeting with Democratic congressional leaders who were criticizing President Obama, and he pretty much got up from the table and said to them, “If you want to go at him, you’ve got to go over me,” and really called them out on their criticism and attacks of the president.
And that got back to President Obama.It was very early on.And I think it was just one of the many proof points that, boy, there’s no one actually you’d rather have having your back than Joe Biden.
And then one of the big issues that we had going in was, we had inherited a couple hundred thousand troops deployed in Afghanistan and in Iraq.And indeed, knowing that this was one of the first things we’d have to look at coming into office during the transition, President-elect Obama said to Vice President-elect Biden: “Why don’t you go?You’re still in the senior job, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.Using that authority, go to these countries during the transition”—actually it was in January, before the inaugural—“to get the freshest possible take on what’s going on, what we need to do, and that will help inform our deliberations, which is one of the first things we need to do in office.”
And so off we went to Afghanistan, to Pakistan and to Iraq.And a lot of that sort of fed the review.In fact, when the vice president-elect got back and we reported to President-elect Obama, the headline on Afghanistan was, if you ask 10 of our guys or folks on the ground there what we’re trying to accomplish, you’re going to get 10 different answers.We need to figure out what it is we’re actually trying to accomplish, what we’re still there for.And he got similar fresh perspective on Iraq.
Anyway, fast-forward.We start to do this very intensive review of Afghanistan, and in the midst of it, the Pentagon makes known publicly that it wants a surge in forces.And that became a dominant question in the review.And in the course of deliberating what our policy should be and what we should do about the Pentagon request for a surge in forces, the vice president began to play this role that I think was extraordinarily valuable, of going into every meeting and really, in a polite, appropriate, but insistent way, challenging people around the table on their premises, on their assumptions.And as the president was watching this, a sort of complicity developed between them that became explicit, in that for the president it was very good to be able to sit back, not show his cards, not show his hand and have the vice president do the pushing and prodding, to the point probably of irritating some of his colleagues around the table.
And it got to the point where they would compare notes before meetings.The president might say to him, “Joe, I’d love it if you focused on this, or if you tried to draw this out.”And it worked, I think, incredibly well and to some extent became a model for the way they teamed up on issues going forward.And that, you know, is a—in a way, I think that experience also cemented the partnership that they had.
Beau Biden’s Illness and Death
The death of his son… how did that affect him?Just the sickness of Beau.There’s many stories of him constantly at the bedside and in Texas and such.Talk a little bit about that, because it goes to the essence of that relationship which is so important to understand.
It’s one of the most remarkable things I’ve seen, and obviously other people, many other people go through similar things and have to somehow navigate these waters.But his ability to be dealing with what was happening to his son and at the same time do his day job as vice president and do it very, very well, was a balancing act I don’t think many of us would be capable of.But, you know—and I also—I don’t know that many people understood how grave the situation was because he put on a very brave face, didn’t let it affect how he was doing the nation’s business.And it was only in a few private conversations that I had with him during this period that I understood how bad it was.
But even throughout, there was this intense hope that somehow Beau would get through it.And they, of course, had the ability that he would acknowledge most Americans don’t have in that situation, to consult with the best doctors in the country.And they were doing everything they possibly could to find a way through.
And so I think he’s constantly—it’s interesting.I mean, given all of the loss that he suffered, he is profoundly animated by hope and by the belief that you can get to a better place, even with, as he would call it, the sort of dark Irish streak sometimes of pessimism.Ironically, I suppose he’s probably most pessimistic when things are going really well.And when things are tough and bad, he has this innate sense of hope and possibility that sort of carries him through.
But in some of these private conversations, you could just feel and see that it was—it was eating away at him.
And I think for those of us who knew him well and knew Beau well, and had tremendous admiration for Beau, just as a person—forget everything that he achieved; he was just a fundamentally decent, decent guy—it was devastating.And I don’t think it was—I don’t think we could compute how the vice president was somehow dealing with this and dealing with the nation’s business.And yet he was.He did.
I saw their relationship up close for many, many years, and we all talk about the bonds between parents and children.This was one of the deepest, most profound that I’ve ever seen.And I think the vice president saw in Beau what he believes is the best possible outcome in life when you have children is to produce children better than you are.Beau was everything that in some ways the vice president aspired to be and maybe thought in some places he was short of the mark.Beau hit the mark.And that combination of smarts and just sheer decency—he had just profound respect for his son.Love, obviously, devotion, obviously—as parents do—but also respect for the man that he was.
And when that is ripped away from you at such an early age, it’s—there aren’t really good words to describe it.
And your takeaway from the funeral?Your remembrances of the funeral?
My biggest remembrance of the funeral is that Joe Biden stood there for hour after hour after hour in the church, in the receiving line, as people came to pay their respects.And just as—just the sheer stamina of it was something I’ve never seen.
But more than that, here he is, having suffered the greatest loss, I think, in some ways, any parent can suffer, which is having your child predecease you, and here he is comforting the people in line, not the other way around.People—the emotion in that church, the depth of the sorrow, the feelings that were on display in person after person after person, from every single walk of life—Delawareans, people from across the country, international—and again, from every walk of life, it was so powerful, so palpable, and yet here are people coming up to him.They’re crying; he’s consoling them.I mean, I’ve never seen anything like it.
Biden’s 2020 Presidential Bid
So he secures the nomination at a point in this country’s history, which is unbelievable, the number of crises that we’re dealing with.It’s a grieving nation.There’s the issue of civil rights being debated in the streets of America after the George Floyd murder.There is the way that Trump has handled it.There’s the COVID-19 disaster that continues on.What does he represent in this situation, running at this point in time, his background in being able to be the conciliator?Where are we now, and why is Joe Biden the right man to be running at this point?
To me, this really is a meeting of the man and the moment.The country is divided in ways it hasn’t been in decades, and maybe in some ways has never been, or at least certainly going back to Vietnam and arguably well beyond that.And that’s palpable.We’re facing challenges that are creating almost a perfect storm—a health and economic crisis unlike any we’ve seen in decades; this—finally reckoning with racial injustice and systemic racism in our country coming together at the same time; and then a world in so many ways increasingly in disarray with not just the impacts of the coronavirus, but all of the incredibly fast-paced change that’s happening and that people are having a hard time adjust—digesting.
So someone who has the ability to bring us together at home and also to, in a sense, bring us together with other democracies around the world at a time when it’s so important we find ways to work together to confront the challenges that we’re all facing, he’s almost uniquely well placed to do that.He can speak to and resonate with and connect with so many different kinds of people in this country.That’s a huge attribute at a time when the person he is running against spends all of his time trying to divide us.
People are angry; they’re hurt; they’re frustrated.But I think underneath all of that, for the vast majority of Americans, is a desire to find ways forward together and to reassert the greatness of this country, which is people from so many different places and so many different backgrounds working in common purpose, animated by common ideas and common ideals.He represents the possibility of bringing us back together in that way.
And we say that every election’s the most important election in our lifetime.I think what’s so palpable now is for so many Americans, this one really is.The choice could not be clearer.The differences could not be starker.And it’s not about—of course it’s about the issues and the substance, but as much, and maybe even more than differences in policies, it’s about the character of our president and the soul of our nation.That’s really on the ballot come November.
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