President Barack Obama presents Vice President Joe Biden with the
Presidential Medal of Freedom during a ceremony in the State Dining Room of the
White House in Washington. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)
WASHINGTON — President
Obama surprised Vice President Joseph
R. Biden Jr. on Thursday by bestowing the Presidential Medal of
Freedom on him, calling Mr. Biden “my brother” in a tearful goodbye in the East
Room of the White House.
Having called Mr. Biden and his wife,
Jill, to the White House for a private farewell, the president instead brought
him into a room filled with his friends, family and colleagues to present him
with the honor, the nation’s highest.
For the first time, Mr. Obama awarded
the medal with distinction, an added level of veneration that previous
presidents had reserved for recipients like Pope John Paul II and Colin L.
Powell, the former secretary of state.
“To know Joe Biden is to know love
without pretense, service without self-regard, and to live life fully,” Mr.
Obama said during the televised ceremony, as Mr. Biden wiped tears from his
eyes and dabbed at his nose with a handkerchief.
Moments later, as the president called
up a military aide to read the proclamation, Mr. Biden appeared to break down,
turning his back to the audience to compose himself. After Mr. Obama hung the
medal around his neck, the vice president cried openly.
“Ricchetti, you’re fired,” Mr. Biden
joked to his chief of staff, Steve Ricchetti. “I had no inkling.”
Addressing Mr. Obama, who stood to his
side, Mr. Biden said that he had never met anyone who had “the integrity and
the decency and the sense of other people’s needs like you do.”
The ceremony was an emotional conclusion
to an improbable partnership that began in 2008 when Mr. Obama asked his former
presidential rival to be his running mate. The two men became close during
eight years in the White House.
“Mr. President, you got right the part about
my leaning on Jill,” Mr. Biden said, referring to the president’s remarks about
the couple’s love. “But I’ve also leaned on you and a lot of people in this
room.”
It was not always clear that the
odd-couple pairing would work, either politically or personally. Mr. Obama
brought a cool and disciplined approach to politics, while his vice president
was the hotheaded, passionate one.
Gaffes by Mr. Biden during the early
part of the Obama administration annoyed the president and his aides. And the
relationship between the two men was strained when Mr. Biden endorsed same-sex marriage in 2012,forcing the president’s hand on the issue.
But their bond strengthened through the
difficult re-election campaign and a second term in which they confronted
several mass killings. And Mr. Biden’s personal tragedy — the loss of his son
Beau to cancer — brought them even closer together.
Last year, Mr. Biden seriously
considered another run for president. But he concluded that his son’s death had
left him emotionally unable to mount an effective campaign.
The citation with the medal noted Mr.
Biden’s “charm, candor, unabashed optimism and deep and abiding patriotism,” as
well as his “strength and grace to overcome great personal adversity.” It
called him one of the most “consequential vice presidents in American history.”
Mr. Obama spoke emotionally about the
relationship between his own family and the extended Biden clan, many of whom
had gathered for the ceremony. “My family is so proud to call ourselves
honorary Bidens,” he said.
Mr. Biden sought to return the
compliment. He noted that the Constitution did not grant the vice president any
inherent powers — “for good reason,” he said. But he said that Mr. Obama had
made good on a pledge to make sure that Mr. Biden had a job that mattered.
“You have more than kept your commitment
to me by saying you wanted me to help govern,” Mr. Biden said, adding that he
hoped the history books would record that he was an asterisk in Mr. Obama’s
historic presidency.
“I can say I was part of a journey of a
remarkable man who did remarkable things for this country,” Mr. Biden said.
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