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Take My VP—Please!

Just 3 weeks in, jokes signal tensions may lurk beneath Obama's public praise of Biden

By Gabriel Winant, Newser User

Posted Feb 10, 2009 11:19 AM CST

(Newser) – Only a few weeks in, and Joe Biden and Barack Obama are already sniping at each other half-seriously? That’s how it sometimes looks, the Los Angeles Times reports. After the VP recently talked up the stimulus package’s chances of failing. Obama responded, “You know, I don’t remember exactly what Joe was referring to. Not surprisingly.”

In October Biden suggested that a President Obama would invite a test from America’s enemies. Then-candidate Obama tactfully replied, “I think Joe sometimes engages in rhetorical flourishes.” The two eat lunch weekly and praise each other in public. But Obama can’t have been pleased by Biden’s recent reference to “our so-called stimulus package.” And the new president was visibly not amused by the VP’s joke about his botched inaugural oath.

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In this photo provided by CBS, Vice-President Joe Biden appears on CBS' "Face the Nation" in Wilmington, Del., Sunday, Jan. 25, 2009. (AP Photo/CBS Face the Nation, Karin Cooper)

President Obama speaks to reporters in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, Jan. 22, 2009, after signing a series of executive orders. At left is Vice-President Joe Biden. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

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ThinkProgress.org, 1/21/09 (adymetzeler)

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If you give me a week, I might think of one. - Then-President Eisenhower, on the accomplishments of his VP, Richard Nixon

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Take My VP—Please!