WASHINGTON – When then-Vice President Joe Biden left the West Wing every night to return home, he would often head into the nearby office suite of National Security Advisor Susan Rice to register, sometimes for urgent foreign policy issues. , sometimes just to shoot the breeze.
“My favorite unannounced visitor was Vice President Joe Biden,” Rice wrote in her book “Tough Love.”
On those casual visits, as well as the daily national security briefings, Biden and Rice forged an easy working relationship, according to the people who worked alongside them during their eight years in the Obama administration. It’s that personal relationship, and Biden’s first-hand knowledge of how Rice would function near a president, that is now considered one of her strongest attributes, as Biden considers her his running mate on the Democratic presidential ballot.
Rice was initially seen as a surprise candidate for the role. The 55-year-old man has a long pedigree in foreign policy, but never held elected office. She is close to former President Barack Obama and his network of political and political advisers, but she has a lower public profile than other women Biden is considering. It has also been a lightning rod for criticism from Republicans, who argue that it put politics above national security.
However, Rice has quietly garnered the support of some Democrats in recent weeks as Biden’s aides face the magnitude of what she would inherit if she defeated President Donald Trump in November. Rice is seen as number 2 who could shoulder much of the initial foreign policy workload, while Biden focused on the COVID-19 pandemic and the revival of the economy.
And although Rice briefly flirted with running for the Senate from Maine this year, it is seen that he is less likely to be running for the presidency, an advantage among some Biden aides who worry about speculation that 77-year-old Biden only could fulfill a mandate if chosen. Some of Rice’s supporters also point out that she did not challenge Biden for the 2020 Democratic nomination, in stark contrast to Senators Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren, who have also been vetted for the No. 2 spot.
But it is the close working relationship Rice forged with Biden during the Obama administration that is considered a key intangible that other contenders simply don’t have.
“His whole theory of politics is personal relationships,” said Ben Rhodes, who served as Obama’s deputy national security adviser, about Biden. “The idea of him taking a leap of faith in someone he doesn’t really know because he seems to tick a political box seems highly unlikely to me.”
Biden is in the final stages of selecting his running mate, and it is believed that he will soon be having in-person conversations with a short list of contenders. He said his running mate will be a woman, and is considering multiple women of color. Rice, who is black, is among them.
Rice spent the first four years of the Obama administration as the United States’ ambassador to the United Nations. On weekends, she traveled to Washington to be with her family and sometimes offered the luxury apartment reserved for the UN ambassador to Biden and his wife, Jill, when they were in New York.
Rice was on her way to becoming Obama’s second secretary of state, but was caught in the political controversy over the administration’s handling of the 2012 attack on Americans in Benghazi, Libya. After Republicans promised to fight his confirmation for the top position in the State Department, Rice withdrew from the race.
Instead, Obama appointed Rice his national security adviser, a powerful position that gave him regular, high-level access to both the president and vice president. She briefed Obama and Biden together in the Oval Office most mornings on the most crucial aspects of their daily national security briefings, and advised Biden on the foreign policy issues she led, including Ukraine’s efforts to combat Russian aggression and instability in Iraq.
“They have worked closely together on some of the most sensitive issues that a president has to deal with, literally war and peace,” said Denis McDonough, who served as Obama’s chief of staff.
People who worked with Biden and Rice, some of whom insisted on anonymity to discuss private meetings and conversations, described them as a kind of strange couple. Rice is seen as highly disciplined and can be brusque in meetings and deliberations. Biden, a longtime politician, is detailed and more likely to make emotional connections even with strangers.
Sometimes they were on opposite sides of the foreign policy debates within the Obama administration, even during the Arab Spring. Rice aggressively argued with the United Nations for authorization to defend a no-fly zone and launch air strikes in Libya; Biden has said he argued strongly against the campaign.
Both were proud of their willingness to give Obama blunt, unadorned advice, and respected that of each other, according to the people who worked with them. But Biden and Rice also developed a lighter relationship, joking around in meetings and after-hours visits at Rice’s offices.
“They developed this kind of mutual respect, but also an informal nature of their relationship that he didn’t have with everyone,” Rhodes said.
Biden and Rice met in the mid-1990s, when she was nominated to serve as Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs in the administration of President Bill Clinton. At 32, Rice was one of the youngest people to reach that State Department level, and she was also pregnant with her first child.
When she arrived at her subcommittee’s confirmation hearing with her young son in tow, Biden, then the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, came forward to answer for her and wish her the best. They also worked together when Rice served as a foreign policy adviser to the 2004 presidential campaign for Senator John Kerry, one of Biden’s longtime Senate friends.
Biden has not mentioned Rice as prominently in public as he has other potential career partners. He has regular policy discussions with Warren and has led online fundraising events with Harris. He also highlighted Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, and Georgia voting rights advocate Stacey Abrams as rising Democratic stars.
But Democrats say Biden has watched Rice in recent months. In public appearances last year, he defended Biden’s work in the Obama administration in Ukraine at a time when he was under heavy attack from Trump, and at a time when Biden’s candidacy seemed to be on shaky ground.
Biden, according to people with knowledge, noticed.
———
AP writer Bill Barrow contributed to this report.
–
Follow Julie Pace at http://twitter.com/jpaceDC
.
