A new book documenting the relationship between Joe Biden and Barack Obama has brought to light the behind-the-scenes reaction to a particular TV interview given by the then vice president at the start of the 2012 reelection campaign.
New York magazine correspondent Gabe Benedetti recounts the incident that angered staffers and reportedly left the then-president “pissed” in his new book The Long Alliance.
Newsweek reports that according to the book, as the 2012 reelection campaign began in May of that year, Mr Biden made an appearance on NBC’s Meet the Press.
The interview turned to the issue of marriage equality and the vice president gave an answer that was not in line with the administration’s position pertaining to gay marriage.
Pressed multiple times by host David Gregory about his view on same-sex marriage, Mr Biden replied: “I think Will & Grace probably did more to educate the American public than almost anything anybody’s ever done so far.”
The NBC sitcom about the friendship between a gay man and a straight woman originally ran from 1998 to 2006. The Smithsonian Institution’s LGBT+ history collection describes the sitcom as breaking ground by using “comedy to familiarise a mainstream audience with gay culture”.
Mr Biden’s comments infuriated Obama aides and caused a rift with the vice president’s team that is said to have gone on for months, as the comment implied that he was taking the lead on what was supposed to be a joint campaign issue and out of step with federal policy.
Mr Biden did tell Gregory that “the president sets the policy”, but added that he was “absolutely comfortable” with gay and lesbian couples being legally allowed to get married.
He also stressed Mr Obama’s stance on relating to the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell in the US military, but went on to discuss the “social culture” regarding same-sex marriage.
Aides for the president reacted with “disbelieving fury” upon reading a transcript of the interview and were angry at the vice president’s apparent inability to stay on topic.
The book reports that reactions from Obama camp staffers included: “We can’t trust him to say his lines and he’s out of practice anyway,” and: “He’s ruined what should have been Obama’s historic moment because he can’t control his loud mouth.”
For his part, the president was not as angry in public as his staffers were about Mr Biden speaking out of turn, seeing it as “Joe being Joe”, but said he would speak with him.
“It was sloppy, but I can’t get mad at the guy for saying what he believes, and what’s in his heart,” Mr Obama is reported to have said. “I’m not going to yell at him.”
However, the president is said to have been “pissed” that Mr Biden had gone off-script on administration policy.
“In private, in his innermost inner circle, [Mr Biden] was still proud, no matter how uncomfortable he’d made Obama,” the book says.
“Once some of the dust had settled, he and [his son] Beau sat down in front of a TV and together rewatched the interview over and over, to marvel at what he’d done.”
Later that month, Mr Obama clarified his vice president’s remarks and his own support for same-sex marriage during an interview with Robin Roberts on ABC’s Good Morning America.
When the Supreme Court ruled in favour of gay marriage in 2015, three years into President Obama’s second term, he called it “a victory for America”.
In 2016, Mr Biden performed the marriage ceremony of two longtime White House staffers at his Naval Observatory home in Washington, DC.
