President Barack Obama gave a speech for the Obama Foundation in Hawaii Sunday night during which he said we have a “deficit of leadership” and “need fresh blood,” according to a Honolulu Civil Beat report.
The comment may have been innocuous: Obama was speaking at an event dedicated to nurturing future leaders in the Asia-Pacific region.
But if the President was sending a subtle signal about his 2020 preferences, it would be bad news for his former vice president. Joe Biden, openly considering a presidential bid, won his first federal-level election in 1972 and has been a major political player for almost 50 years — hardly new blood.
Obama has been cautious with making any kind of endorsement for 2020, saying in November that Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D-TX) has a similar campaign style to himself, but quickly expanding the compliment to “a number of people” considering runs.
Biden and Obama share a famously close relationship, and the then-vice president confided in the then-President that he had decided not to run in 2016 after the death of his son. White House photographer Pete Souza captured Obama helping edit Biden’s speech before he announced his intention to the press.
See? It ain’t so, Joe.
I have noticed that the Tree of Liberty has been looking a little droopy lately.
Joe and the Berniesaurus need to retire and write their memoirs.
I think this is an over-reading. It could equally be considered a signal to Sanders or Warren, and I don’t think Obama would be making a public signal which was subject to potential misinterpretation. More likely, I think, that if he thought Biden should stay out he’d just call Biden and tell him to stay out.
But who knows. Tea leaves are popular.
HCB
(Obama)
“We have a deficit of leadership, and we need new blood,” he said. True leadership features dialogue, listening, inclusion and a “commitment to human dignity.”
“People cling to power instead of seeing the power in other people,” he said.