Warm in Public, Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton Have Been Intense Rivals in Private
By MAGGIE HABERMAN, MICHAEL D. SHEAR and AMY CHOZICK

WASHINGTON — As he watched Hillary Rodham Clinton’s relentless march toward the Oval Office over the past several months, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. was privately churning.

Meetings with his foreign policy aides veered into lengthy discussions about Mrs. Clinton’s hawkish stance. At dinners with donors, Mr. Biden expressed astonishment at her handling of the controversy over her private email server. Those close to him say the mere mention of her name could make him fume, and he viewed her family’s potent, sometimes punishing political machinery with growing resentment.

The decades-long relationship between Mr. Biden and Mrs. Clinton has included many public expressions of warmth, but in private, it has been marked by an intense rivalry as they both imagined ascending to the highest office in the land. And as the Democratic establishment this summer increasingly fell into line behind Mrs. Clinton as the party’s best chance of winning the presidency, Mr. Biden felt slighted and hurt.

The two had not spoken for months, their last conversation occurring at a breakfast shortly after Mr. Biden’s son Beau died in late May.

“I am sure there has been some tension in the last few weeks,” said the Democratic strategist Hilary Rosen. “He didn’t want to close the door, and she didn’t want the door to open.” But Ms. Rosen added, “Fundamentally, these two agree on so much more than they disagree on.”

During an address in the Rose Garden on Wednesday, in which he said he would not seek the presidency, Mr. Biden never once uttered Mrs. Clinton’s name, and said nothing that could be construed as positive about her. But he said several things that appeared to chastise her. He once again described Republicans as “not our enemies,” a reference to her remark during the Democratic debate last week about the enemy she is the proudest to have.

And he said that Democrats should proudly defend President Obama’s record, after Mrs. Clinton has spent recent months distancing herself from it.

On Wednesday, Mrs. Clinton called Mr. Biden and released a statement praising his “grace in grief, his grit and determination.”

Part of the tension between them grew out of what Mr. Biden saw as his role as the natural successor to carry Mr. Obama’s legacy forward. In discussions with potential supporters as his decision about 2016 drew near, Mr. Biden would often describe himself as the true standard-bearer for the Obama agenda, and he expressed frustration at times with the attention paid to Mrs. Clinton.

And, recently, as his consideration of a presidential candidacy became more public, the Clintons and their allies began to drop hints that they would not shy away from raising issues about his record and putting obstacles in his path. At a recent New Hampshire dinner, Mrs. Clinton linked Mr. Biden to a bankruptcy bill he had voted for in the Senate that is deeply unpopular among the Democratic Party’s liberal base.

For weeks leading up to his announcement on Wednesday, Mr. Biden also repeatedly told advisers and potential campaign staff members that he did not believe Mrs. Clinton could defeat the Republican candidate. He watched as she played up her relationship with Mr. Obama, especially when speaking to black crowds in South Carolina and elsewhere, and argued that if anyone should take advantage of the sitting president’s record and high approval rating among Democratic primary voters, it should be him.

The vice president viewed Mrs. Clinton as “this book-smart student who succeeded by dint of grunt work but not by dazzling brilliance,” saw himself as the more “intuitive politician and the intuitive leader and policy maker,” said one Democrat who has spoken to people advising Mr. Biden.

In the last 48 hours, Mr. Biden wore his growing frustration on his sleeve, offering a thinly veiled warning to Mrs. Clinton that Democrats would be “making a tragic mistake if we walk away or attempt to undo the Obama legacy.” In recent days, Mrs. Clinton has announced her opposition to the president’s trade deal with Asia, among other policies.

As colleagues in the Senate, Mr. Biden and Mrs. Clinton were friendly. He was one of the first people Mrs. Clinton met with after her concession speech when she dropped out of the 2008 primary. After Mr. Obama made his vice-presidential choice known, Mr. Biden told a crowd in Nashua, N.H., that Mrs. Clinton “is as qualified or more qualified than I am.” He added, “And, quite frankly, she may have been a better pick than me.”

But Mrs. Clinton’s outsize celebrity as secretary of state began to grate on Mr. Biden. With the news media noting Mrs. Clinton’s heavy travel schedule, aides to Mr. Biden often said that while miles traveled were irrelevant, the vice president had traveled nearly 700,000 miles in his first term, compared with Mrs. Clinton’s 956,733 miles.

“They always had a very correct relationship, a respectful relationship, but not a warm relationship,” said Bill Richardson, who briefly battled Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Biden for the Democratic nomination in 2008. He recalled watching the two of them circle each other warily before debates that year: “Yeah, we’re friends. But we’re watching-over-our-shoulder friends.”

In public remarks on Tuesday, Mr. Biden noted the 1.1 million miles he had traveled — more than Mrs. Clinton. And he said that, unlike a secretary of state, when he speaks with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia or other world leaders, “they know that I’m speaking for the president.”

Mr. Biden’s resentment about Mrs. Clinton has ebbed and flowed. In 2011, pollsters working for Mr. Obama’s re-election campaign asked voters in battleground states a question: Would you be more likely to vote for Mr. Obama if Mrs. Clinton were to campaign for him? The poll intensified speculation that Mr. Obama was considering replacing Mr. Biden with Mrs. Clinton on the ticket, angering the vice president.

The next year, Mr. Obama, aware of how sensitive his vice president was when it came to Mrs. Clinton, edited out a joke about dropping Mr. Biden from the ticket from a draft of his speech for the White House Correspondents’ Association’s annual dinner.

With Mrs. Clinton tucked away from politics and above the fray at the State Department in 2012, Mr. Biden barnstormed the country to sell the Obama presidency, sometimes at the expense of his own approval ratings. But shortly after she left the State Department the next year, presidential speculation began to surround Mrs. Clinton again.

Several Democrats said Wednesday that they hoped any bitter feelings about the rivalry could be put aside, and the party could move forward.

“It just settles an issue that, while it was outstanding and ambiguous, created a cloud of uncertainty,” said Alan Patricof, a venture capitalist who is a donor to Mrs. Clinton’s campaign. “I think now that it is clarified, it makes everything that much more clear.”

希拉蕊、拜登 5個月沒講話

紐約時報報導，美國副總統拜登和前國務卿希拉蕊，人前熱絡，私底下卻關係緊繃。最近幾個月，眼見希拉蕊大步邁向白宮，民主黨內「西瓜效應」日益明顯，拜登感覺被輕視，心裡很不是滋味。

兩人有多年交情，公開場合互動密切；私底下卻互別苗頭，暗潮洶湧，只因兩人的終極目標都是白宮大位。拜登近來和外交政策顧問會面時，經常話題一轉大談希拉蕊的鷹派外交立場，和捐款人吃飯時，拜登不只一次批評希拉蕊對「電郵門」處理失策，拜登身邊的人說，有時只要提到希拉蕊名字就會讓他火大，他對希拉蕊家族盤根錯節的政治勢力愈來愈不滿。兩人好幾個月沒說過話，上次是在5月底拜登喪子後的早餐會上。

民主黨策士羅森表示：「我確信過去幾個月來，雙方關係有些緊繃。對於參選總統與否，拜登不想把話說死，希拉蕊則不想給他任何機會。但基本上，雙方的共識大於歧見。」

在宣布不選總統的記者會上，拜登從頭到尾都沒提希拉蕊的名字，卻意有所指的說，民主黨人應該挺身捍衛總統歐巴馬的政績，和希拉蕊努力與歐巴馬切割形成強烈對比。

拜登認為，自己是延續歐巴馬政績的不二人選。最近當拜登有意問鼎的訊息愈來愈強烈後，希拉蕊陣營開始暗示將檢視拜登在參議員任內的法案投票紀錄，包括引起民主黨自由派強烈反彈的破產法。

2008年美國總統大選民主黨初選時，拜登原本也有參與，後來退出，擔任歐巴馬的副手。當時他說，希拉蕊是更適合的人選。2012年，歐巴馬尋求連任，一度傳出有意延攬希拉蕊當副手，讓拜登很火大。這段往事曾被歐巴馬用來在白宮記者年度晚宴上當笑話講。

希拉蕊以國務卿任內出差近96萬英里為榮，拜登幕僚表示距離不是重點，但是副總統也出差了70萬英里。

日昨的記者會上，拜登說副總統與國務卿不同的是，當他和俄國總統普亭或其他國家領袖會談時，「對方知道我代表總統」。拜登並指出，自己出差累計已達110萬英里。

這一點，拜登超越了希拉蕊。可是在奔向白宮大位的最後一哩路上，拜登不敵。

原文參照：
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/22/us/politics/warm-in-public-joe-biden-and-hillary-clinton-have-been-intense-rivals-in-private.html

2015-10-23．聯合報．A17．國際．編譯張佑生