Why the British press gets Biden’s team so wrong

Eager for an indication of Joe Biden’s attitude towards “the special relationship”, British journalists have leaped onto disparaging comments about Boris Johnson by former Obama administration officials. Soon after the Prime Minister congratulated Biden on his victory on Saturday, Tommy Vietor, a former Obama National Security Council spokesperson responded: “This shapeshifting creep weighs in. We will never forget your racist comments about Obama and slavish devotion to Trump.”

Another former Obama aide, Ben Rhodes, previously said: “Im old enough to remember when Boris Johnson said Obama opposed Brexit because he was Kenyan”. In a separate instance, he said of the UK’s coronavirus death figures: “The British embrace of Brexit and Boris Johnson is really ageing well.”

It’s no secret, then, that Obama-era officials dislike the British Prime Minister. The question is whether these men will have an influence over Biden’s foreign policy. Articles in the British press suggest they will; almost every story about the UK-US alliance this weekend quoted Vietor and Rhodes heavily, linking them directly to Biden. “Some of Biden’s allies – not official aides – made clear their hostility towards Johnson,” said The Guardian.

This displayed a subtle yet important misunderstanding of the relationship between the Obama and Biden worlds.

Tommy Vietor and Ben Rhodes had nothing to do with Biden’s presidential campaign, have nothing to do with Biden’s transition team, and won’t play roles in Biden’s White House. Indeed, both were regarded with disdain by Biden’s aides during the Democratic primaries, when they would regularly mock the then-lacklustre Biden campaign on their podcast. “I don’t think [Biden] really cares what a 30-something Pod Save America host thinks about him,” one Biden aide told Politico, referring to Vietor. “And that honestly might be why he’s the nominee.”

Rhodes’ memoir dismissed Biden as an “unguided missile” in Obama’s White House. The former deputy national security adviser is regarded by Biden’s team as part of an arrogant clique around Obama that not only patronised Biden – whom they regarded as intellectually subordinate – in Oval Office meetings, but actively obstructed his attempt to run for president in 2016 in favour of Hillary Clinton.

In essence, these men do not speak for Biden – and their undiplomatic language, widely picked up by the British media, will likely irritate Biden’s actual foreign policy team.

For a more accurate indication of the Biden camp’s analysis of Johnson, we should heed the words of Senator Chris Coons, who’s heavily tipped to be Biden’s Secretary of State. “In my meetings, with the Prime Minister, he’s struck me as someone who’s more agile, engaging, educated and forward looking than perhaps the caricature of him in the American press would have suggested,” he told the Andrew Marr Show on Sunday.

“His experience as Mayor of London, his embrace of diversity, his interest in climate change, and the ways in which he’s managed to navigate the difficulties of politics, all made him an engaging person to meet with and speak to, and it’s my hope that President-elect Biden will have a similar experience.”