Former President Barack Obama and President Joe Biden have an ongoing dialog about multiple issues, according to the White House.
Obama’s role in the administration of his former vice president became a topic of interest during Monday’s media briefing, based on a White House transcript of the event.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki was asked whether Obama had visited the White House and how often the two talked.
“Well, I will say, having a unique view of this question, they are not just — they were not just the president and vice president; they are friends, and they consult and talk about a range of issues. And, you know, I would expect that continues through the course of President Biden’s presidency,” she said.
“That can be done over the phone, it turns out. And I don’t — I think if President Obama had been here, you would all know; he’s a recognizable figure,” Psaki said.
The press secretary said Obama’s advocacy for expanding Obamacare dovetails with where Biden is going.
Asked how many times the two had spoken since Biden took office, Psaki replied, “I don’t have an exact number for you. You know, they keep in regular touch and our teams are in regular touch about a range of issues.”
In early March, Bloomberg reported Biden said Obama “was so modest” about taking a “victory lap” after the 2009 passage of the mammoth American Recovery and Reinvestment Act that he did not get enough credit for the act’s impact.
“I kept saying, ‘Tell people what we did.’ He kept saying, ‘We don’t have time, we’re not going to take a victory lap,’” Biden said. “And we paid a price for it, ironically, for that humility.”
To some, the current administration is simply a third term for Obama.
The extent of the relationship between Biden and Obama was plumbed by Jonathan Allen, the co-author of “Lucky: How Joe Biden Barely Won the Presidency,” according to ABC News.
“A lot of the reporting in the past has been about them being very close,” Allen said.
“And, you know, they describe themselves as having a mentor-mentee relationship, but it does not appear that they agree on who the mentor is. And I think that causes a lot of friction between the two of them and has over the course of, you know, basically 12 years now.”