Is Biden Making False Excuses for Obama?

Is Biden Making False Excuses for Obama?HT: WhiteHouseDossier.By KeithKoffler.

Vice President Biden, who is in Rome to attend the installation mass of Pope Francis I, today told Italian President Giorgio Napolitano that President Obama is skipping the event because of his trip to Israel.

“The President sends his regards and the only reason he’s not here is he’s going to Israel,” Biden said.
Except, during the mass Tuesday morning, Obama will be in . . . Washington. He doesn’t depart for Israel until Tuesday evening U.S. time, which is well into Wednesday at the Vatican. What’s more, Rome is on the way to Israel for Obama. 

Obama has nothing going on Monday that couldn’t be rescheduled. He does meet with the Irish prime minister Tuesday, who is in the United States for the annual St. Patrick’s Day promotion of his island. And he’ll have a substantive chat with the leaders of Northern Ireland. But even Biden doesn’t cite this as a reason to ditch the Pope. It seems perhaps the real reason is that Biden, who is Catholic, has far more interest witnessing the installation of a new Pope that President Obama, who is not.Read the full story here.

Update:  Just one of the things -- with the election of the new Pope and the President’s trip, it seems that we’re going to have both the President and the Vice President abroad next week. You’ll have to excuse me for not having the kind of institutional knowledge that Mark Knoller does, but is there a precedence for this? Were there arrangements that had to be made in order to accommodate the fact that both of them will be moving abroad? And do we have adequate safeguards in place that, God forbid, something would happen that we don't have another Al Haig moment?

MR. RHODES: You know, it’s an interesting question. I actually don't know for certain if they’ll be abroad at the same time. I believe that the Pope’s first event is Tuesday that the Vice President is attending, and the President will be leaving late Tuesday night. So it is an interesting question you ask. I’m actually just not sure whether it will be the case that the Vice President is still overseas in Italy at the same time that President Obama will be leaving U.S. airspace for the region.

So we can look into that. We do take those considerations into account and do prudent planning to ensure that we’re prepared for any contingency, and we often seek to coordinate their travel for that purpose.