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[MOTIVATIONAL MUSIC] - Hi everyone.

Steve Adubato.

This is a compelling book.

It is "The Last Politician: Inside Joe Biden's White House and the Struggle for America's Future".

The author is Franklin Foer, and he is with us now.

Frank, good to see you.

- So good to be with you.

- You know this book is fascinating on so many levels, but the title itself, "The Last Politician", you've been asked this before, but tell everyone why that title and why you refer to Joe Biden as the last politician.

- Well, interestingly, our last two presidents, Barack Obama and Donald Trump both styled themselves as anti politicians.

They were people who came from outside the system who disdained Washington.

Joe Biden is somebody who's been around so long, been around Washington so long that you couldn't call him anything other than a politician.

And his theory of how to save democracy, both from threats abroad and at home, was that essentially that you needed to prove that politics still work.

That there was still ways to bridge differences through persuasion, through deal making.

And at various points in the Biden administration, it seemed like he was the only guy in America who really shared this faith anymore.

- This is my sense of the book.

You're a fan.

- Yeah.

- Meaning you, believe in Biden, you believe, you really studied the first two years of the Biden presidency.

You spoke to dozens and dozens of people inside the White House.

Outside the White House.

So he compares himself to Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the New Deal, which transformed the role of the federal government.

And in many ways, that's what Biden said he wanted to do.

And you analyze Biden's efforts in that regard.

His greatest accomplishments before we talk about some of the real challenges that he has as a public person in this arena at this time with the 2024 election and all the challenges that represents, that being said, his greatest accomplishments policy-wise, that impact people's lives, Frank, in the first two years are?

- Okay.

Well, one thing I just want to say as preface to that is that Joe Biden likes to say, "Don't compare me to the Almighty.

Compare me to the alternative."

And I think- - Yeah, I've heard that.

- The way that we evaluate politicians is with this sense that they can do anything if only they forward themselves into making the case more robustly, if only they push people to go a little bit harder.

And so when I judge Joe Biden, I look at what he's done with a one vote, what he accomplished with the one vote majority in the Senate and with this world, whether it's the alliances abroad or the politics that we practice at home crumbling.

So that said, I think the most important thing that he's done is that he's redirected the economics of the Democratic Party.

And so he's gone in a different direction than Barack Obama and Bill Clinton.

They were people who were tepid towards unionism.

They believed in free trade.

Biden has embraced something called industrial policy, where he uses the government in order to make big bets on what the future of the American economy is going to be.

And so he's managed to create a domestic semiconductor program, and he's invested tons of money into building a clean economy.

And so we've done nothing to meaningfully take on climate change in the past.

He passed this massive bill that's going to bring forward the day, which with which we embrace alternative energies, electric vehicles, and we create all of these things in America that there's something called the battery belt that's emerging in the American South, which is, that would not have happened were it not for government spending the money and coordinating the investment.

I think that that's probably the most significant thing that he's done.

- On the other end.

- Yeah.

- He is 81 right now.

He'll be 82 in 2024, 86 if elected on the back of a second term.

So my question to you is, after studying Biden, after talking to those who know him best, you dedicate in my view in reading the book, not a lot of time, not a lot of pages to the issue of age.

You don't, and it's not a criticism, it's just an observation.

- Yeah.

- But you know that a significant number of Americans question the President's ability to be the vibrant, engaged, cognitively focused, effective president in a second term being 86 on the back end.

Is that not relevant to how you assess him, or is it only those first two years, Frank?

- Well, my book was about his first two years- - Right.

- And it in fact did talk about the age question in that it demonstrated despite his age that he was a very active and engaged president who was in the middle of all these decisions for that time, which is different than the questions about age moving forward.

And I think if you look at the limitations that age puts on his presidency, you'd have to begin with the way in which it raises all sorts of political questions in the minds of American citizens who doubt that he's all there.

They think that somebody else is pulling the string.

Those are fair questions to ask.

- What do you think?

What do you think, Frank?

- I think if you looked at who Joe Biden is right now, you'd say that Joe Biden would ace the type of mental acuity test that Nikki Haley has proposed that presidents should take.

It doesn't mean that he's going to be a compelling figure on the campaign trail if he ever was a compelling figure on the campaign trail.

And it also doesn't mean that he's gonna be an effective 86-year-old president because people, people age.

- Joe Biden- - We do.

- Joe Biden's age will advance.

There's no, there's no, there's no coalition that could be built to stop that from happening.

- Okay, let's try this.

There's so many interesting things by the, about Joe Biden and his presidency and his, I'm a student of leadership, so I'm fascinated by his micromanaging and his communication style.

We'll get into that in a second.

The book is "The Last Politician", Frank Foer is the author.

Question.

We're taping this program in the middle of December.

It'll be seen in 2024.

As we speak, Hunter Biden's been indicted.

The charges are what they are.

People can follow that case.

How do you describe, and you understand this better than most, Frank, the President's relationship to Hunter Biden.

A and B, why he continually says in public got nothing to do with me, when again, a significant number of Americans say really, nothing to do with you?

Please.

- Yeah.

So there are a couple things to be said about Hunter Biden.

The first is, is that it's a relationship that's layered in all sorts of guilt.

I think that Joe Biden recognizes, and probably not incorrectly, that Hunter Biden would not be prosecuted right now, were his father not president of the United States.

That there, these charges would've probably gone away at some point.

There would've been a plea deal that would've been had, that would've been acceptable- - Right, if he weren't the President's son.

- If he wasn't the President's son, yeah.

- Would he be making millions of dollars serving on boards of foreign companies if he quote, "Weren't the president's son?"

Because I'm just curious about how you see- - No, he would, he would.

He would because- - Because he is what, incredibly talented?

- No, he's, I think Hunter Biden personally is a scuzzy figure who has exploited his father's name.

I think at various points, his father should have stopped him from doing so, especially given the role that Joe Biden was playing in Ukraine.

And then on the other hand, I also think that this, none of, none of what we're describing in any of these charges against Hunter Biden have anything to do with Joe Biden's performance as president.

There's nothing that links Hunter Biden's, you know, misdeeds, whether legal or illegal to anything that the president has done to change policy in his presidency.

The one charge against him has to do with the president actually pushing to fire a corrupt prosecutor in Ukraine, which I actually think is one of the best moments in Joe Biden's vice presidency where he went to Ukraine, he pushed the Ukrainians to behave less corruptly.

Now, Hunter Biden's presence on the board of Burisma was a sign that American political system is not as clean, not as free from influence peddling, not as free from the use of connections as Joe Biden was preaching in public.

And so you could charge him with hypocrisy on that score.

But I don't think there's anything substantive.

- Okay.

You mentioned Ukraine.

The Ukraine situation as we speak today, and what Russia is doing, again, speaks for itself.

Why do you believe President Biden is so committed to protecting Ukraine and providing US military and other support to Ukraine?

And why is that such a hard sell for some at this point, Frank?

- Well, it was, there was an incredible amount of unity in the globe support for Ukraine, because I think most of the world saw what Joe Biden saw, which was that you had a country that had done nothing that got invaded by its neighbor who was far more powerful- - Right.

- That had dreams of reconstituting his empire.

And so the fear that that Russia could keep rolling through Europe and reconstitute the rest of its empire was a very real fear.

I think that Joe Biden, what's amazing is that given that Americans actually made incredible sacrifices on behalf of Ukraine in the form of higher energy cost, in the form of inflation, more generally being higher, it's incredible that that solidarity has persisted.

But inevitably, there was going to be a moment, I think, and Joe Biden said at the very outset of the war, there'd be a moment where American support would sort, would begin to falter.

And that moment has now arrived.

- Why do you call President Biden, well, he calls himself and you, you quote it quite accurately, "I'm a Senate man".

- Yeah.

- "I'm a Senate man."

His sense of the United States Congress, and particularly the United States Senate as a major chamber of the two, what the heck is, I'm doing this?

Why should I do that?

We were in the Giants season, it's a Tommy DeVito thing.

Sorry, has nothing to do with Joe Biden.

Why do you believe he has such reverence and respect for the United States Senate?

- So he arrived in the US Senate in 1973, and he had just experienced the death of his wife and daughter in a car crash.

He was a shattered guy.

And he joined this fraternity where he had all these senators gonna rush around him and embrace him.

And so for him, the personal and political are very much interconnected.

I think that he's always kind of revered the Senate as this club that bucked him up.

And then he was the Senator for oh, so long, and it's the major chapter in his career.

And so he, he just loves the institution.

Has it come at a cost, I think is a question that one could be, could raise about his presidency.

And there were various moments, especially in the negotiation of these big bills during the first two years where he acted as if he was majority leader.

In fact, his chief of staff had to run into the office one day to chastise him.

You're not the majority leader, you're not prime minister.

And he felt like he could, he could bring these deals over the line himself.

And so he probably over invested presidential time and prestige in trying to bring them along.

- And PS.

again, this isn't so much political.

Well, that's political, but it's also policy.

If the Democrats had not taken those two Senate seats, those two competitive seats in Georgia.

Right?

And the Democrats then wound up with the Vice President Kamala Harris, who I'm gonna ask you about in a moment, having the ability to do that and to have a majority to vote, things may have been very different on policy.

Is that an overstatement, Frank?

- It's an overstatement.

I think that those two Senate seats at least got him the American Rescue Plan and then certainly got him the Inflation Reduction Act, which claims, which concludes the climate reduction stuff that we were talking about.

- Okay, so here's the thing I'm gonna, I'm curious about, you know what, this is a Pandora's box because I'm gonna talk about Joe Biden as vice president under Barack Obama and as president with Kamala Harris as his vice president.

And that's not an in and out conversation.

We're with Frank Foer, who's the author of "The Last Politician Inside Joe Biden's White House and the Struggle for America's Future".

Stay with us, we'll be right back.

To watch more Think Tank with Steve Adubato, find us online and follow us on social media.

- Welcome back, folks.

We're talking to Frank Foer, who's the author of "The Last Politician: Inside Joe Biden's White House and the Struggle for America's Future."

Joe Biden, Vice President under Barack Obama.

Describe the role he played as Vice President, plus his relationship with the former President Barack Obama, and then we'll talk about Kamala Harris.

- Right.

So, when Joe Biden was picked by Barack Obama, Barack Obama felt as if he needed to reassure the country that he was gonna have this experienced hand by his side.

And in fact, Joe Biden filled in these massive gaps in Barack Obama's resume.

He had this foreign policy experience, and he had a willingness to do the political work, the negotiating with Mitch McConnell and the like that Barack Obama didn't wanna do, but I- - Biden liked doing that.

Biden liked it.

- Biden liked it, but Barack Obama and the people around Barack Obama never were able to take Joe Biden totally seriously, even as they respected those parts of him.

That Obama would roll his eyes when Biden would start to tell these folksy stories, and I would argue that there was an element of kind of class that was playing out there, that Obama and a lot of people around him had gone to Ivy League schools.

Joe Biden had not gone to an Ivy League school.

Joe Biden was very proud of that fact, but he also was worried that those people would think that he was stupid.

And so he would constantly try to prove that he wasn't stupid, which in fact made the people, the Ivy Leaguers, think that Joe Biden was a cornball, and so that class dynamic played out constantly.

- Now, given the fact that, and again, in this book, Frank talks extensively about the impact being Vice President under Barack Obama has had on the way the President, President Biden, has handled the vice presidency with Kamala Harris.

Why doesn't the Vice President have a more impactful and significant portfolio, A?

And B, why hasn't the President supported her having a more significant, impactful portfolio given what he experienced as Vice President, Frank?

- So, I would say on the one level, there's a bit of hazing and sadism that's involved.

I mean, there's nothing harder, the vice presidency is a notoriously lonely job, and one that seemed like it comes with power, but really is essentially powerless.

And the only thing harder than being a vice president is being a former vice president's vice president.

So Biden gives her this first job of going to Central America to do diplomacy around migration, which was a task that Barack Obama had assigned to him when he was Vice President.

So he didn't see any real reason not to give her that assignment.

On the other hand, Kamala Harris, I think, really struggled to come up with an independent political persona.

And so she struggled to come up with a portfolio that suited her own skills.

And so there was a moment, and I think it's almost comic, where she asked to be put in charge of relationships with Scandinavia.

And you can't really ponder a more meaningless, no offense to the Scandinavians, foreign policy assignment than that.

You know, and having embraced Central American diplomacy initially as a job that she was gonna relish, she kind of pushed it to the side and didn't pursue it because she was getting so much political blow back from that.

And so I think that she's struggled to figure out who she is.

- So, if she hasn't played, if the Vice President, Kamala Harris, has not played a significant role in being in the President's ear and influencing him- - Like, (indistinct) you on that assumption?

I mean, I think- - Go ahead.

- You have to just judge it relative to other vice presidents as well, and so- - How impactful do you think she is?

- So, I think that she is present in a lot of meetings.

I think that she weighs in in a lot of meetings.

I think she comes to those meetings asking smart questions.

- How impactful do you think she is, Frank?

- I mean, right.

But she is standing next to a president who is incredibly self-confident about his own role, which I think limits her ability to be a super impactful vice president.

- But Jill Biden.

- Yeah.

- Plays an incredibly important role in influencing the President.

And, you know, you talk about that, but I'm gonna also say this to you.

I appreciate everything you said about how much the President has accomplished, but I was literally watching video, and it's multiple times that the President is walking off a stage and not sure where to go.

And it is Jill Biden who often reaches out, takes him by the hand and moves him where he needs to go.

People can decide for themselves what that means or whether, why is Steve even talking about that?

She's there for him in a lot of ways that we see and often don't see.

Frank.

is that, again, an overstatement?

- No, it's not an overstatement.

I mean, she is, I mean, you could say it's a sign of a healthy marriage, that your wife is one of your primary advisors, and it's also a sign of a healthy marriage that that finger, those fingerprints are kind of obscured to the rest of the world.

- Does it make him look weaker when she has to do that publicly?

- Yeah, of course it does.

I mean, you- - Okay.

- Right?

That's not, it doesn't seem like a very controversial statement.

- No, it's not, but in terms of policy, she has strong beliefs, particularly around education.

She's also been very engaged in the national, excuse me, the National Education Association, the NEA.

To what degree do you believe that Jill Biden has influenced President Biden and his views about education, particularly the role of teachers in the teacher's union?

- I think she has.

I mean, I think you could say that relative to the Obama administration, there's been less of an embrace of charter schools.

- That's right.

- I think that when you look at some of the initial decisions that relate to getting kids back into school because of COVID restrictions, I think that his instinct was to try to smother the teacher's unions with love rather than kind of use sticks to kind of beat them back into the classroom.

So, and I think that a lot of that does begin with Jill Biden's influence.

- You know, early on in the book, Frank, you write compellingly, in such a powerful way about the early days of the Biden administration, and the fact that what was left to them by the Trump administration, the disorganized nature of that transition and the fact that people were not there to be supportive, share information.

In fact, hide information from them.

It's had great impact, had a great impact on the early years, early days of the Biden administration.

The question is this.

To what degree do you believe January 6th impacted President Biden's perception of his role as President at that moment?

- I think what happened on January 6th had the effect of not so much transforming the way that he thought about the presidency, but reinforcing it.

That I think he came in believing that he didn't wanna run a polarizing presidency.

He wanted, and a lot of this had to do with the vaccine, that he wanted to persuade people to take the vaccine.

And so in the early stages of his presidency, he resisted all sorts of calls from within his circle to do passports or mandates or things like that, which he viewed as something that would kind of provoke a culture war unnecessarily and counter productively.

Ironically, I think one of the great mistakes that he made in his first year was that he ended up pursuing a vaccine mandate which was ineffectual and just had the effect of making the pandemic culture wars even more inflamed.

- A couple more questions before I let you go.

Biden as a public communicator, you talk about him, being, he rambles and that he is, quote, an interesting word you use, I'm a student of communication and public communication.

I'm obsessed with it, hopefully in a healthy way, but I'm not sure, because you say that he's an "undisciplined communicator."

What do you mean by that?

- Well, we've gone through this presidency, and where he's done a very limited number of press conferences, a very limited number of sit down interviews.

And I think part of the reason that that's the case is that he's gone through his career saying impolitic things.

That, you know, going back to the Obama administration, part of the reason the Obama administration changed it's position on gay marriage was that he went on "Meet the Press" and he started to riff and he said something that became policy, unintentionally so.

And I think there are various moments, like when he goes to Poland at the beginning of the Ukraine war and he starts to talk about how Putin shouldn't be allowed to stay in power, and so these- - No, no, didn't he do.

Wait a minute.

Hold on, Frank.

He said more than that about Putin.

Didn't he say Putin need to be removed?

- I don't have the quote at the top of my mind.

- Was the inference that had to be corrected, and this is about the undisciplined nature of his communication, that something needed to be done?

- Yeah, no, so the implication of what he said, and I don't have the words.

- Go ahead.

- Is that regime change needed was the American policy, and that was an American policy.

In fact, it was something that he'd struggled to avoid saying all along.

And so I think that one of the tendencies that you see is that he, because he's, he knows he's President of the United States, because he knows that his gaffes, if that's what we're going to call them, have implications, I think he tries to restrict his own public appearances.

He tries to self-edit, and one can only self-edit successfully only so much.

- Yeah, a couple more on this.

He gets defensive in public forums when questions, there's a lot of video, you can check it out.

And again, President Trump did the same thing in his own way in a very, and people can argue, in a very personal and nasty way.

I don't, my sense is that's not where President Biden is coming from, but he can get very testy in public situations and get peeved that he's even being asked the follow up question if someone doesn't think he's answered a question.

Is he touchy that way?

- Yeah, he is.

I mean, he talks about, he self-consciously talks about it as having what he calls an Irish temper.

And I think one of the things about working with Joe Biden and Joe Biden's, let's call it his emotional register, is that it's wide.

There are moments of incredible grace, where you see this empathy.

If your parent dies, he will call you.

He'll call members of your family.

You know, that is a real part of who he is.

And then there's part of him that, especially when he feels like somebody is looking down on him and questioning his intelligence or questioning his integrity, he can be incredibly testy.

And I've also seen moments where he punches down, where an aide comes in to brief him about protocol in front of a press conference, and because they don't have a trusting relationship and he feels like they're condescending him, he'll call them a horse's tail or something like that.

- Well, a few seconds left farther.

Our producers are so good.

Let me see that quote again.

The quote about Putin is, "For God's sake, this man cannot remain in power."

That's the exact quote, Franklin.

Real quick, before I let you go, Biden, Trump.

To what degree, just predict this, 30 seconds or less, to what degree do you believe the President, President Biden, will be out publicly campaigning?

- I mean, he will.

He has to be.

I mean, I think that especially given that age is the question that people have about him, he can't run a basement campaign this time around.

- The author is Franklin Foer.

Frank has been compelling and understands Biden in a way that most of us don't but need to.

The author of the book, "The Last Politician: Inside Joe Biden's White House and the Struggle for America's Future."

Frank, thanks so much for joining us.

We appreciate it.

- Thank you so much.

- I'm Steve Adubato.

That's a great author.

We'll see you next time.

- [Narrator] Think Tank with Steve Adubato has been a production of the Caucus Educational Corporation.

Celebrating 30 years in public broadcasting.

Funding has been provided by PSEG Foundation.

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The New Jersey Education Association.

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And by Community FoodBank of New Jersey.

Promotional support provided by New Jersey Monthly.

And by CIANJ, And Commerce Magazine.

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