Two long articles appeared in the Washington Post on June 7 describing the close relationship between President Obama and Vice President Biden. One of them emphasized that “the recent death of Biden’s son, Beau, has magnified a striking personal bond between Obama and Joe Biden.” The other, by political reporter Juliet Eilperin, stressed the political bond, quoting Valerie Jarrett, David Axelrod, and others in the White House on the closeness of their relationship and the degree (high) to which the president relies on Biden.
Although it’s easy to understand the emotion surrounding the recent death of Biden’s son, Beau, the effusiveness of these recent stories smells a bit fishy. Eilperin reports, for example, that “Biden regularly attends the president’s daily intelligence briefing.” Someone close to the president (or possibly the vice president) must have told her that, but it has been widely reported that the president no longer holds daily intelligence briefings.
Writing, also in the Washington Post, back in 2012, Mark Thiessen noted that
The Government Accountability Institute, a new conservative investigative research organization, examined President Obama’s schedule from the day he took office until mid-June 2012, to see how often he attended his Presidential Daily Brief (PDB) — the meeting at which he is briefed on the most critical intelligence threats to the country. During his first 1,225 days in office, Obama attended his PDB just 536 times — or 43.8 percent of the time. During 2011 and the first half of 2012, his attendance became even less frequent — falling to just over 38 percent. By contrast, Obama’s predecessor, George W. Bush almost never missed his daily intelligence meeting.
These findings were widely reported in the conservative press and elsewhere. Representative of the president’s defenders was an ABC News report calling the criticism “semantic.”
The White House does not directly dispute the numbers, but insists they are a “selective representation of the facts.” Obama has never “skipped” a Presidential Daily Briefing, aides say, even if an in-person briefing isn’t listed on his schedule.
While his predecessor might have preferred an oral daily briefing, Obama religiously reads a written version of the same prepared material, often on a secure iPad (as seen in this official White House PHOTO ). He often receives an in-person briefing in addition, aides note, as well as real-time national security updates during the day, both in the office and on the road.
Even the CIA itself put out a statement in 2014 in an attempt to quell the controversy:
The style, format and presentation of the PDB are based on the preferences of the current president. President Barack Obama, for example, asked CIA to explore a way to deliver the PDB electronically. On Feb. 15, 2014—68 years after the first Daily Summary was published—the final hard copy edition of the PDB was printed. President Obama and other key national security policymakers now receive the PDB, six days a week, in a tablet format.
Fine. So the president no longer receives — and presumably for most of his presidency did not receive — daily briefings in person. But why, then, was Post reporter Eilperin told that “Biden regularly attends the president’s daily intelligence briefing”?
Could the Obama White House possibly be trying to enhance Biden’s stature out of fear (or even hope) that Hillary’s poll numbers will continue to decline?
