Joe Biden’s gaffes before presidential candidate decision put Obama in awkward position

He’s not even in the presidential race, but Vice President Joseph R. Biden already has a mouth that is getting him into trouble and putting the White House in an uncomfortable spot.

Mr. Biden’s list of gaffes got longer Tuesday when he made an awkward joke about faking prostate cancer in order to leave the administration, and, more seriously, offered the bizarre claim that he did, in fact, support the 2011 raid that killed al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. The vice president previously said he opposed the mission, and other top officials — including President Obama — suggested that Mr. Biden was skeptical of the raid.

Mr. Biden, who is expected to decide this week whether he will run for president, also claimed Tuesday that the president gave him veto power over any Cabinet nominee. The White House steered clear of that assertion and also refused to address the confusion around the bin Laden mission — a potential preview of the difficulties the administration will face if Mr. Biden launches a presidential bid.

Analysts say the White House is likely to be forced to play referee in any potential disputes between Mr. Biden and Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Rodham Clinton, who served as Mr. Obama’s secretary of state for four years. Mrs. Clinton, too, has said that Mr. Biden was opposed to the bin Laden mission.

“You could see this anytime a moment from the first term where Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton interacted and a moment like that has to be litigated, the White House could be dragged into these stories, and that’s not what it wants,” said Matthew Dallek, assistant professor of political management at George Washington University. “It certainly creates an unusual dynamic.”

On the bin Laden raid, Tuesday’s comments represent the first time Mr. Biden has said he fully backed the mission. He claimed that he offered his true position during a private conversation with the president and avoided taking a firm stance during meetings in the situation room.

“As we walked out of the room and we walked upstairs, I told him my opinion that I thought he should go but to follow his own instincts,” Mr. Biden said during a speech honoring former Vice President Walter F. Mondale.

The White House would not weigh in on the conflicting reports. White House press secretary Josh Earnest said he couldn’t confirm Mr. Biden’s account and told reporters that they would need to ask Mr. Obama, the vice president, Mrs. Clinton or someone else who was in the room when the decision was made to raid bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan.

“I was not in the room when these decisions were being made. I’m going to leave the dissection and the oral history, if you will, of those days to those who were actually there,” Mr. Earnest said at Tuesday’s White House press briefing. “I don’t have any insights to share with you about the private conversations between the president and the vice president.”

Aside from the important foreign policy question of whether he backed the bin Laden mission, Mr. Biden added to his history of amusing yet awkward statements.

That record includes telling a wheelchair-bound Missouri state senator to stand up at a campaign rally, calling Mr. Obama “the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean” to run for the presidency, joking that in Delaware “you cannot go to a 7-Eleven or a Dunkin’ Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent,” and caressing the shoulders of Stephanie Carter, wife of Defense Secretary Ashton Carter.

Prostate cancer jokes now can be added to the list after Mr. Biden recounted a conversation with the president in which he laid out his conditions for joining the administration.

“Two things: to be able to completely be level with you and argue with you if we disagree, privately,” Mr. Biden said of his 2008 discussions with Mr. Obama. “And secondly, I want to be the last person in the room on every major decision, and I didn’t mean that figuratively, I meant that literally — the last person in the room. He’s president. He gets to make the decision, and unless there’s an overwhelming disagreement in principle, in which case I’d develop prostate cancer or something and leave, and he knew I meant that I get to be the last person in the room. And that’s where I think I can serve best.”