The friendship between Barack Obama and Joe Biden was never supposed to happen. When Obama arrived in the Senate in 2005 as a newcomer, Biden was a veteran of… See more

 

The friendship between Barack Obama and Joe Biden was never supposed to happen. When Obama arrived in the Senate in 2005 as a young freshman, Biden was a thirty-two-year veteran who had been sworn into office at his sons' hospital bedside in 1973, and during one Foreign Relations Committee hearing, Obama passed a note to an aide that read simply: "SHOOT. Me. Now." They were not close. But when Obama won the nomination in 2008, he chose Biden as his running mate, and once in the White House, he put him in charge of Iraq policy, the economic stimulus, Ukraine, and gun control. What drew Obama to Biden was not just his political skill but the way he loved his family, a closeness Obama had never known as a child raised by his grandparents and a single mother. The bond became public in June 2015, when Beau Biden died of brain cancer at forty-six, and Obama stood in a church in Wilmington and called himself part of the Biden clan: "Joe, you are my brother." He had already proven it months earlier, when Biden mentioned at one of their private lunches that he might have to sell his house to cover Beau's medical bills, and Obama got up from the table, put his hands on Biden's shoulders, and said: "Don't sell that house. I'll give you the money. Promise me." In January 2017, Obama surprised Biden with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, awarded with distinction, calling him "the best vice president America's ever had" and joking that the ceremony gave the internet one last chance to talk about their bromance. Biden turned his back to the cameras to wipe his eyes and said, "Mr. President, I'm indebted to you. I'm indebted to your friendship." It was never a bromance. It was a brotherhood.