Middle-Class Man A Regular 'joe'

Jan 28, 2010 — Politico

Carol E. Lee

Weathering the toughest days of his presidency, Barack Obama is turning to someone he usually has to bail out: Vice President Joe Biden.

“Joe,” as the president calls his vice president, is a natural ally for Obama as the president shifts to a heavy focus on the economy, specifically the struggles of the middle class. One of the few longtime Washington hands who still comes off as an outsider, Biden is well-suited to help Obama recapture his common touch amid a swirl of anti-establishment anger that voted Republican Scott Brown into the Senate last week.

Biden’s role as Obama’s middle-class minder will reach a new level Thursday when he introduces the president at a rare joint town hall meeting that the two of them will host in Florida about jobs and the economy.

White House aides say the president and vice president sharing a stage Thursday in an important swing state is not the beginning of an Obama-Biden road tour. But they concede that Biden has probably scored better than most in the administration when it comes to communicating with the middle class, and he vouches for Obama on those types of issues.

“He’s the ultimate weapon,” said Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, a Democrat and a close friend of Biden’s. “Joe is even more effective as a communicator to the middle class than the president is.”

The post-State of the Union trip to Florida kicks off a ramped-up domestic travel schedule for both Obama and Biden, aides said, that will stress the economy and middle class.

While Obama and Biden will hit the road separately in coming weeks and months, their domestic messages will be more in tandem than they have been in the past year, when Obama was consumed with health care — a topic Biden admitted was out of his comfort zone — and Biden was focused on stimulus events and the middle class.

Biden and Obama dramatically toned down their frequency of domestic travel in the last half of their first year in office. At the beginning of his term, Obama vowed to get outside of Washington at least once a week “just to remind everybody — myself included — that these are the folks who we’re working for.”

But Obama stayed closer and closer to the White House as the health care debate heated up, leaving mostly just for fundraisers and foreign trips. Since June, Biden held six out of the past seven meetings of the White House Middle Class Task Force in the Washington area. By contrast, those meetings were held around the country — from Pennsylvania to Colorado — in the initial months after Obama created the task force last February and named Biden the chairman.

Now, as the White House tries to recalibrate its message, the spotlight is on those efforts, and, as a result, on Biden — who still regularly reminds people of his modest Scranton, Pa., roots.

A new blog posted Monday on the Middle Class Task Force’s website informed visitors: “The President and Vice President Together on Easing Burdens for the Middle Class.”

Prior to Monday, the last blog posted on the site was on Nov. 12. That was a week after unemployment hit 10 percent for the first time and Obama took a political hit in the Virginia and New Jersey elections. It was also on the same day Obama announced plans for a jobs forum before leaving for an Asia trip that set a new record for foreign travel by a president in his first year in office.

Obama has conceded that going forward he could do better at making sure Americans don’t look at Washington and wonder, “Do they really get us and what we’re going through?” as he told ABC after Democrats lost the Massachusetts election last week.

On Monday, Obama attended his first Middle Class Task Force meeting, where he announced the adoption of policy recommendations the group will make in a report not due out for another few weeks.

In Florida on Thursday, Biden will be there to announce billions in stimulus funds for high-speed rail projects and to introduce Obama.

“The thing that he needs right now is Biden’s street cred,” said Ross Baker, a political science professor at Rutgers. “No one would ever accuse Joe Biden of being excessively cerebral. He’s a very bright guy, but his intellect is much more accessible.”

It’s not the first time Biden has played this role for Obama. After Obama generated controversy for saying Massachusetts police “acted stupidly” when they arrested a black Harvard professor at his own home, it was Biden who was out in public telling cops how much Obama valued them.

But most of the time, it has been Obama and his staff coming to Biden’s aid — clarifying when he’d go off message or completely correcting the record when he’d make a gaffe.

Yet for a president who is under fire for his disconnectedness — Maureen Dowd of The New York Times wrote Wednesday that “Obama is coming across as plastic and hidden, rather than warm and accessibly all-American” — Biden’s off-message tendencies could be an asset.

“This is his moment,” Democratic strategist Chris Lehane said of Biden. “One of the reasons why he connects with people is because he doesn’t sound like he’s reading the talking points. ... This is a time when you’re looking for some kind of an emotional connection, particularly with the middle class, and you’ve got somebody who can do it.”

Biden’s approval ratings — while lower than Obama’s — are also steadily favorable. According to a recent CBS News poll, although just 46 percent of people approve of the way Biden is handling his job, only 27 percent disapprove (27 percent also didn’t have an opinion) compared with Obama, who wins 50 percent approval from people but has a 40 percent disapproval rating.

In his remarks Thursday, Biden will discuss Obama’s State of the Union address, according to an aide, and the president’s plans for helping Americans get through tough economic times.

But also look for Biden to vouch for Obama the man, to talk about how he knows firsthand that Obama is driven by fighting for the little guy.

“I am still as convinced as I was in the beginning — the leadership and resolve of this man, President Barack Obama, is going to be made absolutely clear [to] all the American people by next Election Day,” Biden told Democrats on Tuesday. “So folks, I ask you only one thing: Keep the faith; keep the faith.”