US President Barack Obama on Thursday surprised US Vice President Joe Biden by bestowing the Presidential Medal of Freedom on him, calling Biden “my brother” in a tearful goodbye at the White House.
Having called Biden and his wife, Jill Biden, to the White House for a private farewell, the US 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, Obama awarded the medal with distinction, an added level of veneration that previous US presidents had reserved for recipients like Pope John Paul II and former US secretary of state Colin Powell.
“To know Joe Biden is to know love without pretense, service without self-regard and to live life fully,” Obama said during the televised ceremony, as Biden wiped tears from his eyes and dabbed at his nose with a handkerchief.
Moments later, as Obama called up a military aide to read the proclamation, Biden appeared to break down, turning his back to the audience to compose himself. After Obama hung the medal around his neck, the US vice president cried openly.
“Ricchetti, you’re fired,” Biden joked to his chief of staff, Steve Ricchetti. “I had no inkling.”
Addressing Obama, who stood to his side, 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 Obama asked his former US 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,” Biden said, referring to the US 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. Obama brought a cool and disciplined approach to politics, while his vice president was the hotheaded, passionate one.
Gaffes by Biden during the early part of the Obama administration annoyed the US president and his aides, and the relationship between the two men was strained when Biden endorsed same-sex marriage in 2012, forcing the US president’s hand on the issue.
However, their bond strengthened throughout the difficult re-election campaign and a second term in which they confronted several mass killings. Biden’s personal tragedy — the loss of his son, Beau Biden, to cancer — brought them even closer together.
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