“The Last Politician:” Inside Biden’s White House

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CHIEF INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: Franklin, your book is already being gobbled up for the access you’ve had, for the fact that it’s being described as the first real deep dive into this presidency. You call it “The Last Politician.” What do mean calling Joe Biden the last politician?

FRANKLIN FOER, AUTHOR, “THE LAST POLITICIAN”: Well, we live in an age of anti-politics. Last two presidents, Trump and Obama, ran against the simply. They were outsiders and proud of that fac and they bemoaned Washington. Joe Biden is nothing if not a creature of Washington. And his theory of the case is that in order to save democracy from the domestic threats of authoritarianism and in order to prove democracies worth its competitors abroad, he needs to show that democracy can still deliver for its citizens. And in effect, he’s trying to show that a politician in politics, in this be practice that we have for mediating our differences of opinion is still the most effective way of running a country. And there were times, in the course of its administration, when nobody in Washington, nobody in the country, at moments, seemed as if they shared his faith in politics. And it looked like he was headed, at various moments, to a Jimmy Carter like presidency. And one of the remarkable things about Joe Biden is that he is a creature of comebacks. And so, every time everybody writes him off, he somehow manages to find a way to arrive at his greatest successes.

AMANPOUR: OK. So, you set me up perfectly because you almost wrote him off. You actually said, I viewed him as a bloviator who dangerously fetishizes bipartisanship. But you also say, the consistent under estimation of Biden was his diesel. In other words, his super power. So, what is it that somebody even like you who’s doing the deep dive, you know, practically blew him off at the beginning?

FOER: Well, it’s not even just the beginning. I remember when I was a very young reporter, I was 24. I got my first phone call with Joe Biden, which felt like a momentous occasion because he’d run for president and he was chairman of the Senate committees. And five minutes into the call, I was like, oh, my God, this guy is never going to get off the phone. And he has — the way that he talks with the folks he anecdotes, the stories that he tells over and over again, I think among the elite of the Democratic Party who all went to Ivy League schools and pride themselves on their technocratic expertise tend to look down on Joe Biden as somebody who is not one of them. And Biden is acutely aware of this fact that he is an outlier among elites. And so, simultaneously he creatives the affection and admiration of elites, but he also looks at them with a bit of distain, that he thinks that they’re — they can be lazy, that they can be high bound in their thinking. And that chip on his shoulder and that element of social class, I think, have always been the essential key to unlocking Joe Biden.

AMANPOUR: It appears that “Wall Street Journal” says 73 percent of voters say Joe Biden is too old to run for president. This is Biden at Philadelphia on Labor Day addressing the elephant in the room. Let me just play it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE BIDEN, U.S. PRESIDENT: You know, that Biden, he’s getting old, man. I’ll you what. Well, guess what? Guess what? I — you know, the only thing that comes with age is a little bit of wisdom. I’ve been doing this longer than anybody. And guess what? I’m going to continue to do it with your help.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AMANPOUR: So, what do you make of that and did you talk to him or his, you know, closest about that issue? He will be the only president or he is, to have turned 80 in office and he will be 86 completing a second term. Does he think it’s a problem?

FOER: I think the distance between the public Biden and the private Biden on this is pretty much negligible. I thought a lot about this age question and the way in which we’re not able to treat it with any sort of nuance. I think everybody has aging relatives and everybody brings their own personal baggage about aging to this question. And it should be said that individuals age in different sorts of ways. We have the example of Dianne Feinstein, the senator from California, who genuinely appears unable to do basic function of job because of age and illness.

AMANPOUR: And maybe Mitch McConnell, the minority leader in the Senate.

FOER: Perhaps. And then, you have the example of somebody like Joe Biden. And you look at the way that he strolls the stage, it’s clear he’s aged. And you listen to the way that he talks, he doesn’t talk in the same sort of register that he did when he was — 10 years ago. But I’ve also — and so, I’ve seen conversations with Joe Biden. I’ve seen the way in which both parts are true. I’ve seen him tell stories that go on a little bit long and where he gets a little bit lost in the story, which maybe Joe Biden always did. That’s one of the raps on the guy. But I’ve also seen how he turns it around in five — you know, and a second later, he’s giving a commanding description of American grand strategy in the Indo-Pacific filled with all sorts of individual — precise details and complicated plans and nuanced thoughts. And so, both thoughts are true. He is old and his age has brought wisdom. And I think we struggle culturally to find the right way to make sense of this important part of who he is.