Obama gives emotional eulogy for Beau Biden
The kiss, at the end, said it all.
While delivering a moving lament for Beau Biden on Saturday, Obama offered a remarkable statement of love and gratitude for another man: the father of Delaware’s favorite son and his own vice president, Joe Biden, whose life is again stricken by personal tragedy.
Obama is known for emotional restraint and rarely wears his heart on his sleeve, but produced his most personal and heartfelt tribute yet for the man who shares his burden of power, just at the moment his friend needed it most.
“Joe, you are my brother. I’m grateful every day that you’ve got such a big heart and a big soul and those broad shoulders. I couldn’t admire you more,” Obama said, looking Biden squarely in the eye as he delivered a eulogy at a funeral mass in the St Anthony of Padua Roman Catholic Church in Wilmington, Delaware.
It was a rare glimpse into the personal relationship between a president and his deputy, who are locked in a constitutional embrace that throughout history has often proven to be fraught with tension.
While the top two men in this administration get on well, the vice presidency still requires someone like Biden, with an outsize political ego and distinguished career of his own, to defer to his boss for a job that has few real powers or responsibilities.
On Saturday, Obama seemed to almost relish the chance to repay Biden for his loyalty, one week after his son died from brain cancer.
As he spoke, the President was on the verge of choking up and once appeared to wipe away tears from his eyes in one of the few occasions in his presidency — the Newtown, Connecticut school massacre in 2012 was another — when he has seemed close to being overcome.
Obama’s eulogy was the long culmination of a bonding process between a larger-than-life Washington veteran and his younger boss — which started when Obama chose Biden to join him on the Democratic ticket in 2008.
Knowing Biden’s pride for his deceased son might be the way to inject some consolation into his grieving heart, Obama dwelt on Beau Biden’s decency, his strength, and his character.
“To know Beau Biden is to know which choice he made in his life. To know Joe and the rest of the Biden family is to understand why Beau lived the life he did,” Obama said.
“What an inheritance Beau left us. What an example he set,” he told more than 1,000 mourners in the church. “Beau Biden brought to his work a mighty heart. He brought to his family a mighty heart. What a good man. What an original.”
After ending his eulogy, Obama left the pulpit, bowed to the altar, then crossed to clasp Biden close, their cheeks pressed together. Then as they parted, Obama placed a single kiss on his vice president’s cheek, a gesture hinting at a side to the President that a public used to his more buttoned-up image doesn’t often see.
In honoring Beau Biden in such a personal way, Obama seemed to be telling his vice president and his wife Jill how much he valued his friendship, his loyalty, his “sprawling, intimate clan” of a family and the values for which he stands.
Through a tumultuous presidency characterized by wars abroad and economic struggles at home, Biden has been a behind-the-scenes rock for Obama.
Sometimes, Biden’s outspoken style and loose lips appear to have grated on Obama — like the time the vice president got ahead of his boss on backing same-sex marriage, or when he was caught on a hot mic telling the President that the passage of his health care law was “a big f***ing deal.”
But behind the scenes, Obama, his family and his staff have grown to deeply respect Biden, and Jill has worked closely with first lady Michelle Obama on projects to help veterans of America’s modern wars and their families.
“To Joe and Jill, just like everybody else here, Michelle and I thank God you are in our lives. Taking this ride with you is one of the great pleasures of our lives,” Obama said.
Obama said that although Beau Biden was “an original,” so much of his character could be traced to his father, who, despite his own crushing grief, nurtured him and his brother Hunter after their mother and infant sister died in a car crash more than 40 years ago.
“It’s no secret that a lot of what made Beau the way he was was just how much he loved and admired his dad,” Obama said.
“From his dad, he learned how to get back up when life knocked him down. He learned that he was no higher than anybody else and no lower than anybody else.
“And he learned how to make everybody else feel like we matter, because his Dad taught him that everybody matters.
“I will tell you what: Michelle and I and Sasha and Malia, we’ve become part of the Biden clan. We’re honorary members now,” Obama said, slipping into the mode of Irish blarney that his vice president so adores.
“And the Biden family rule applies. We’re always here for you,” he continued. “We always will be. My word as a Biden.”
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