Grumpy Uncle Joe?
Say it ain't so!
An essay from National Review‘s Charles C.W. Cooke with the crass title “Joe Biden Is an Asshole” is making the rounds in the Republican blogosphere. The gist:
Can we not all see it? For those who cannot conceive of truth without triangulation, I will freely stipulate that Donald Trump is an asshole, too — and that, in some ways, he’s an even worse one. But that does not let Biden off the hook. President or not, Biden is a decrepit, dishonest, unpleasant blowhard. He’s a nasty, corrupt, partisan fraud. He is, as Shakespeare had it, “a most notable coward, an infinite and endless liar, an hourly promise breaker, the owner of no one good quality.” Biden is twice as irritating as he believes himself to be, and half as intelligent into the bargain. From the moment he arrived on the scene — nearly 50 years ago, Lord help us — he has represented all that is wrong with our politics. A century hence, his name will be set into aspic and memorialized under “Hack.”
What’s the basis for this absurd set of assertions?
At Axios, Alex Thompson reports the apparently surprising news that Biden “has such a quick-trigger temper that some aides try to avoid meeting alone with him.” Among the president’s favorite admonitions are: “God dammit, how the f**k don’t you know this?!,” “Don’t f**king bullsh*t me!,” and “Get the f**k out of here!” Per Thompson, these revelations are important because, like his refusal to acknowledge his own granddaughter, they threaten to damage Biden’s “carefully cultivated image as a kindly uncle.” But that image is for cretins and sycophants. Joe Biden has never been a “kindly uncle” — or anything approaching one. For his whole life, Joe Biden has been a plodding mediocrity with a Delaware-sized chip on his shoulder. What about him, I wonder, would not lead him to shout stupidly at people? He’s a bully. Check. He’s insecure. Check. He’s senile. Check. He is hostage to his precarious record of lies. Check. His anger is as inevitable as the sunset.
I read the Axios report and must admit I wasn’t terribly bothered by it. Biden’s Irish temper is hardly a state secret but he’s got a reputation as being pretty good to work for. He’s known to insist that staffers make time to attend birthdays and other important family events, for example.
Cooke’s column was the first I’d heard of the unacknowledged granddaughter, a fact that apparently gained traction after being mentioned in Maureen Dowd’s latest column. Essentially, wayward son Hunter got a stripper pregnant while on one of his frequent benders and the family isn’t too keen on highlighting that fact. I’m not sure this makes Joe Biden an asshole, though, so much as it highlights the continuing tragedy of Hunter’s inability to get his shit together despite being given considerable advantages. (Albeit, also considerably tragedy in the death of his mother and baby sister when he was but a child and the more recent death of the favored brother.)
Cooke continues,
We don’t need Axios to tell us about it. In 1987, during his first run for president, Biden was in spiffing form. Asked by a voter in New Hampshire about his academic record, Biden grew unhinged. “I think I probably have a much higher IQ than you do,” he said, before rattling off a sequence of falsehoods that ought by rights to have ended his career. He said that he graduated in the top half of his law-school class. He did not. He said that he went to that law school on a “full academic scholarship.” He did not. He said that he “won the international moot-court competition,” “was the outstanding student in the political science department,” and “graduated with three degrees from undergraduate school.” None of that was true. In closing, Biden betrayed what the exchange was really about. “I’d be delighted to sit back and compare my IQ to yours if you’d like,” he jabbed. Mr. Dunning-Kruger, your table is ready.
I do indeed remember that incident. It was indeed the mark of an asshole (or, at least, an insecure jerk) and it reminds me that it’s not quite true that I’ve always liked Joe Biden. That was, however, 35 years ago. Granting that he was a middle-aged man of 45 at the time, he seems a genuinely better human being these days.
Instapundit guest Ed Driscoll approvingly cites the piece and piles on with an even older anecdote, a truly cringe-worthy interview with Kitty Kelly from way back in 1974.
Amusingly, the commenters, while agreeing that Biden is indeed an asshole, use the space to bludgeon Cooke for not realizing it in time to get behind Trump in 2020 and instead urging people to vote for Biden.
And, over at Patterico’s, guest poster JVW calls Cooke’s characterization “exactly right,” adding,
The court stenographers (as Rush Limbaugh used to call them) still want us to believe that Joe Biden is a lovable, grandfatherly, figure who — ok, sure — may from time to time lash out in a rather startling manner but who otherwise is dedicated to restoring honor and dignity to the White House. Pish posh. He’s a raging jackass, a man who was only about half-bright to begin with and now has lived long enough to witness his mind turning to mush in his dotage, which in itself has made him infinitely more irascible and stubborn.
[…]
The President’s eruptions of sputtering episodes of rage are apparently even directed at young female staffers. It was just the other day that an older powerful white male speaking harshly to young women aides was considered to be absolutely unacceptable and an unquestioned abuse of authority. These days, with a progressive establishment desperate to keep Democrats in power and stuck with a truly wretched human being as party leader, the media is finding it harder and harder to cover for this pompous jerkwad. Not that they don’t try. The same Axios article which related President Biden’s awful temper took some ameliorating steps to explain them away by dutifully quoting an unnamed Biden aide who insists that the Boss’s temper-tantrums and barbed outbursts demonstrate a measure of respect for the unlucky recipient. They also quote unnamed employees of Team Biden as pondering whether more public displays of his temper would help assuage concerns by the voters that the 80-year Chief Executive lacks passion for the job, somehow ignoring the fact that Biden has on many occasions shown his prickly and pugnacious side, never really to any positive effect save for his most devoted fans.
Whether it’s in lashing out at other branches of government, his repeated lies and fairy-tales, or the simple bullying of his overmatched staff, Joe Biden has proven conclusively that he is unfit for the office which he holds. Given that this has been the trend for our Chief Executives in recent years and that there is a very strong chance that next year’s election will come down to two grossly unfit choices offered up by our two major political parties, we seem to be entering into the dying days of the American experiment. It was fun while it lasted, but we voters proved to be incapable of keeping our Republic, just as Benjamin Franklin seemed to foreshadow nearly a quarter-millennium ago.
It is possible, I suppose, to simultaneously believe, as both Cooke and JVW seem to, that Trump is unfit for office and that Biden is, too. (I haven’t read Driscoll consistently enough in recent years to know his position on Trump.) But it sure seems like a lot of vitriol over a report of yelling in the oval office and some decades-old anecdotes. And, if we’re again faced with the choice between a twice-impeached former President who tried to foment an insurrection and a guy who yells at staffers and was a jerk to reporters during the Reagan administration, it’s not a particularly close call.
JVW does, backhandedly at least, make a point that occurred to me as well reading the Axios account about our double standards on demeaning treatment of staffers. In particular, Amy Klobuchar got quite a bit of scrutiny over her own tirades, with a weird incident involving a salad garnering page one treatment in the nation’s newspaper of record. The most obvious explanation is that we view these things through gendered lenses, giving men more of a pass for being, well, assholes. But it’s also true that Klobuchar was a relative unknown on the national scene, while Biden has been well known for almost half a century now. Our perception of him as an all-around decent guy is pretty hardened at this point and it can survive some contrary evidence from time to time.
This is just another flavor of bothsidesism.
If Biden is ugly in his behavior sometimes, then Trump’s ugliness only levels the playing field. Scale and intensity don’t matter – both sides, at some level, do it.
It’s lazy both-sides-are-the-same rhetoric, and it’s very effective for the Republicans who push it at every opportunity.
Saw somebody yesterday saying this seems to have become a meme on the right, claiming Klobuchar, or Harris or Biden are mean to their staff. I think I saw the same story about one of the D justices. Find, or invent, a couple anecdotes and fill in the blanks in the template.
When your evidence is one Axis story, then an incident from 1987 and then 1974, I have to think that maybe just maybe, there is some cherry-picking going on.
It seems likely to me that a man in his 80s who has been powerful his whole life, and is now the most powerful man in the world, and also has an incredibly stressful job, might get short with his staff at times.
But this is not exactly epic, in my mind:
I have become less sensitive to profanity over time and use it with some significant frequency these days. As such, the actual phrases don’t hit me as red flags. Plus, tonality matters, as does who he is talking to.
To be clear: I don’t want any POTUS demeaning the staff or being cruel. I would prefer they not throw temper tantrums. But I need more than an Axios piece and others then extrapolating out behaviors that they have no evidence for before I get too concerned about this.
And in regards to the granddaughter, which I was aware of, I think that that is a highly complicated situation that is not anywhere near as simple as many people are making it out to be.
@Tony W: Yup.
@Steven L. Taylor:
Indeed, and I meant to note this in the OP. My workplace is exceedingly collegial and remarkably non-hierarchical for what is, at the end of the day, a military organization. And that kind of language is quite commonplace.
What comes across as mean and berating in print may well be jocular in verbal context. Or just a really busy man with not much filter left.
@gVOR10: The Klobuchar stuff, at least, certainly wasn’t coming from the right.
When Ruth Bader Ginsburg died, someone I know who has a DC-career working for Democrats relayed a story about her on social media. To me, a story about placing shrimp shells in a random young person’s palm while at a party because she believed they were an intern did not make her sound great. But the DC-based people were loving the story and they loved her. Go figure.
I’d heard Biden was a yeller. But Klobuchar was just weird–biting into things and then expecting her staffer to eat the other half. There’s a degree of difference there. As far as saying fuck goes, it’s way less offensive than Charles Cooke, who should be banned from writing.
@Steven L. Taylor:
This sums it up in its entirety.
I’ve been hearing some version of this story about every President back to and including Reagan, including Obama. For the most part its lazy reporters or opinion writers trying to fill column inches. It only becomes a legitimate story when it reaches the point where they have trouble attracting staff. As far as I know, only Trump qualifies for that honor, and I suspect that had little to do with his temper.
Politicians are all in the category of “big egos”. I mean it’s practically a requirement anyone who sees themselves as POTUS (Ditto brain surgeons and fighter pilots). And let’s not forget the insane pressure that anyone at that lever of government experiences. But this piece is just so much thin gruel.
Most of us do things all the time that, if looked at in isolation with no context, would put us in anything but a fair light. I suppose you could make the same argument for fake electors, bullying governors to find votes, and goading your vice president to deliberately throw out lawful electors (or ginning up some much mayhem the whole thing ends up in the house of represtitives), but the two things do strike me as equilvent.
But to compare him to Trump with this stuff and and claiming that it cancels each other out is hysterical. I mean how many times have you seen famous actors make internet lists of both the nicest people in Hollywood and the biggest assholes simultaneously?
As distasteful as I find Biden’s unwanted sniffing, fondling, and kissing girls and young women, I still prefer him to Trump.
Yawn.
I have to wonder why no one bothers to give context to Biden yelling “Don’t bullshit me, man!” at a staffer.
Was the staffer in fact, bullshitting him? We know for a fact that the world of staffers and aides and various political appointees is a chum-filled shark tank of craven careerists and bullshitters, and further, that the decisions they make are literally life and death decisions affecting millions of people.
Would it matter if the “bullshitting” in question was an aide telling him they were out of ice cream?
Or telling him a poorly sourced story urging a drone strike on a target, in hopes of self-obvious self promotion?
We don’t know, and the lack of any curiosity about these incidents is pretty damning. I think it is Cooke and company who are bullshitting us, man and should get the f@ck outta here.
If only someone like Jimmie Carter, educated in technology, calm, faithfully married, truly a good Christian, military record, etc, would run. I’m sure that he would be widely respected by Democrats and Republicans. He’d take a leadership position on energy and climate change; he’d even put solar panels on the White House. He’d have the diplomatic chops to negotiate agreements in the Middle East. Americans of all stripes would support him.
@Steven L. Taylor: @James Joyner:
It’s kind of hard not to swear when discussing anything Trump-related.
@Steven L. Taylor: I recall reading a story told by someone who worked for Jeff Bezos pretty early on – early enough that he was in meetings with Bezos. Other sources had reported that Bezos had a temper, too. But this source said, “yeah, he’s got a temper. He gets mad when he thinks someone is shining him on – bullshitting him. He has very little tolerance for that. If he finds a mistake or omission in your presentation, the best thing to do is to say, “Yes, I missed that. I’ll fix it right away.” And then there’s no temper tantrum. But if you try to bob and weave, you will invoke his full ire.’
Soooo, I think it’s perfectly reasonable for Biden to illustrate how much of a problem it is when his staff bullshits him. In this day and age, dropping f-bombs is kind of not a super big deal, in most cultures.
@Rick DeMent:
Confession: about an hour ago I lost my temper and allowed frustration to lead me to raise my voice with someone in our physical plant. I am sure that the guy in question, with whom I have had frustrated calls before, over the course of years, thinks I am an asshole. And if a story about my demeanor was written, and that was one of the anecdotes, you might think that, too.
I did apologize and still kind of feel bad about it (but also think that my general frustration level with that whole shop is 100% warranted).
I didn’t favor Biden because he is nice, but because he has a grasp of policy and the political experience to get things done.
Hahaha…what weak twaddle. The President–any President–is well within his rights to call out people for wasting what’s probably the most valuable time of anyone’s on Earth. If you show up in front of the President without your shit 100% collated, or–far, far worse–try to bullshit him, why would you not expect him to be irritated? We’re all adults, right? We should have thicker skins by now. Don’t try to blow smoke up the President’s ass and you won’t get snapped at.
Old: r/AITA
New: r/IMP2A2
@Steven L. Taylor:
“But this is not exactly epic, in my mind:
Among the president’s favorite admonitions are: “God dammit, how the f**k don’t you know this?!,” “Don’t f**king bullsh*t me!,” and “Get the f**k out of here!”
I have become less sensitive to profanity over time and use it with some significant frequency these days.”
And isn’t it always the rightwing folks who bemoan how soft everyone is nowadays? Now a few F-bombs and we’re supposed to freak out?
@Kazzy:
Trump was renowned for lumbering around the Oval Office screaming “fuck.”
With the status of actually having been recruited for my qualities as a volatile a*****e, I have to say that in the context of the 1987 account, having “matured” is hardly a high bar to jump. But I will also hasten to say that it is still a bar than many I’ve known fail to clear. Still, looking at the charges leveled and remembering the famous story of the customer, the longshoring hook/meat hook/some sort of heavy pointed object, and leaving someone for dead in the wet cooler, I have to ask:
IS THIS ALL YA GOT? REALLY?
@Slugger: Unless he ran as both a Democrat and a Republican, no, Americans would not get behind him, and evangelicals would still claim he’s ushering in the age of the Antichrist.
Wow, politicians have private and public personas, and often act like self-important assholes. Who knew? Except Trump seems to be same kind of asshole in both in public and private.
I do think it matters how politicians lead their staff and that it reflects on their character. And everyone has bad days where they might go off, and Biden is no exception. I haven’t looked into this deeply, but I don’t remember Biden having a history of hemorrhaging staffers due to toxic leadership. So I think this is just the latest case of Republican partisans throwing stuff at a wall and hoping it sticks.
Again, working mostly from memory here, but I recall that the allegations about Klobuchar were from many former staffers and were pretty well documented. She did seem to have a problem – a quick Google brings up a 2019 NYT article that notes she has (had) one of the highest staff turnover rates in the Senate – a pretty big sign that there is a problem. And Klobuchar publicly promised to do better which is at least a tacit admission.
He’s well known for referring to the passage of ObamaCare as “a big fucking deal.” Of course he swears.
Without audio so we can judge the tone, this is not news.
Also, here’s this from Axios
He just seems so much more likable now.
@Just nutha ignint cracker: Yeah, my point is that Carter was roundly rejected by the American public. Got an asshole for President; isn’t that what you have been voting for?
This is all about trying to prove Biden is just as bad a person as Trump to take that advantage away from Biden. His saying the F word in private is just like making fun of the handicapped in public. Or Biden’s being overly touchy around women is just like screwing a porn star while your wife is pregnant then paying to cover it up.
Steve
@steve:
You probably have to be a woman to understand why Biden’s behavior is repellent: It assumes he has the right to do this and the woman has no say in the matter. It makes women feel enraged and powerless simultaneously.
I’ll happily concede that Mr. Grab-Em-by-the-Pussy is a lot worse.
@Jay L Gischer:
I learned long ago, bobbing and weaving is pointless.
Admitting you made a mistake, unless you are constantly making mistakes, won’t hurt you. On the contrary, honesty earns respect.
In defence of Biden, I give you … Lindsay Graham
https://youtu.be/kLMYW8jFPHg
@CSK: Has Biden been too touchy-feelly since the whole thing came up and he said he wouldn’t do it again?
This is a genuine question that I think a woman is going to be better at answering, because a man will often overlook things or forget about them after an uncomfortable laugh (“that just looks wrong…”) and shaking the head.
If he hasn’t done it since, then I think we have to consider taking him at his word that he’s just a handsy guy who thinks physical contact is comforting — a touch on the shoulder, a nose in your hair, etc. Well, that mixed with a being bit oblivious and always in a position where people never correct him because the hair sniffing is weird.
The human golden retriever, hopefully a little better trained of late.
Some very effective politicians were known for frequently going full volcano in private.
Winston Churchill in particular was notorious for not suffering fools gladly.
If memory serves, both Truman and LBJ had similar reputations, in different ways, Truman being more icy when angry, Johnson more inclined to open rage.
@Gustopher:
Well, the fact that Biden had to be told to knock it off, at his age, is significant, I think. He should have known that himself. And it’s not that it was customary for men of his generation to sniff and fondle strange women. I know plenty of men of his generation, and older, and younger, and they…just…don’t…do that. They know better or respect women more. Maybe it’s the New England in me speaking, but this is not acceptable.
I’ll never forget when Biden started giving an unwanted neck and shoulder rub to the wife of the man to whom Obama was awarding the Medal of Honor. I’d have clocked him, or wanted to do so.
@CSK: As someone who has very definite internal physical boundaries for anyone but closest family, I can easily imagine the frustration and anger that comes from having someone feel free to touch you when you don’t want it. Two things come to mind. One, a friend of my in laws who ruffled my curly hair whenever she saw me, usually before or after church. This was when I was in my 30’s and 40’s! And then another was just a cultural thing. When I lived in Ghana it was normal for men friends to hold hands (I assume it still is). I would have been very uncomfortable if a woman acquaintance held my hand, because of the boyfriend/girlfriend connotation in my head, but even without it having that connotation I was extremely uncomfortable. Everything in my head shouted “TOO CLOSE!!!” but I knew it might be seen in anther way if I withdrew my hand (didn’t consider them a friend, a racial thing, a class thing).
Bottom line, even for me uncomfortable familiarity happens often enough that I actively try to avoid it. And I observe that people (men and women both) do this even more to women. I would be a wreck by now if I had to endure that on a regular basis.
@CSK: Biden is on the extreme edge of touchy feely and rubbing someone’s shoulder crosses way over the line, but there is at least some defense that in his younger days it was a common complaint against men that we were too aloof and didn’t know how to express common humanity. I’m 15-20 years younger than him but I remember all the encouragements to “hug more”. In contrast to my parents generation (15-20 years older than Biden), who never hugged anyone in public but little kids, it became the norm amongst my peers to hug your friends when you see them. My wife hugs everyone. My female friends hug me when I see them after a time. Some of my male friends do. (My hugs are notoriously awkward and the subject of much humor). I definitely remember it being considered a negative that so many men are “stand off-ish” and a lot of talk about “putting your hand on someones shoulder and looking them in the eye” when you talk to them, and things like that.
@MarkedMan:
Yes, but doing this–hugging, kissing, sniffing, massaging total strangers–is acceptable?
Look, I don’t want to imply that I favor Trump–God knows I don’t, as anyone knows who’s read anything I’ve written about him over the past seven years–but this is not excusable. It speaks to a chronic contempt for women.
@CSK: Or simply a different cultural frame, there is no rational basis except prejudice to evoke “contempt”. Good god Americans are incredibly puritans deep down.
In my experience, it’s rare to find people who pride themselves on being straight-shooters who are not just as susceptible to bullshit or even moreso. I have fallen backwards and to my regret into positions of power, and it’s almost always pretty clear to me when someone is direct vs when is making excuses. Ad yet I don’t think yelling or getting angry has anything to do with getting better results. Equally, just like Biden (who fell for everything dumb about Iraq, amongst other things) I have been snookered as well. Live and learn.
There’s a power-worshipping fanaticism to American politics and business culture and admitting that we are all bred to suck dick, for the most part, regarding control of anything does not come easy. Churchill, for example, was led around easily by Stalin and FDR, and he’s like an idol to America for these exact traits. Biden seems likable enough and not weird, and that is probably why his staffers like him. But you have to be dumb to believe that getting angry achieves better results than any other tactic. People worship tactics for leadership in the same way that astrology worships planets. It’s really irrelevant.
@Modulo Myself:
I think your second paragraph gets to some really important points. First, and less importantly, it reminds me of a kind of hypocrisy, easily seen in the type of right-winger who is all about “alpha males” except when someone they don’t agree with does it, like Biden. If Trump was telling subordinates to fuck off, they’d be all for it.
But mostly I agree that getting angry doesn’t work, except in very, very specific circumstances, and even then it is questionable that’s the best approach. In my leadership positions, I’ve lost my temper a handful of times and always regretted it.
And finally, we all have blind spots. Churchill had them, Biden has them, we all have them. That’s why leaders need people to tell them frankly when they’re about to make a poor decision. No one knows everything or can see everything. Good leaders know when to listen to these warnings.
@Lounsbury:
There’s nothing in the least puritanical about not wishing to be fondled by a stranger. You might ask any woman you happen to know what her feelings on the subject are.
@CSK:
The man is really fucking old. He grew up at a time when taking women for granted* was just normal, and he has been in the corridors of power for most of his life where people were likely afraid to tell him that the thing he thinks is comforting people (and we’ve seen him be hands-on with men too, just not as much) was sometimes considered creepy and intrusive (and often considered creepy and intrusive if he didn’t know the person really well).
And other times he has a middle-aged biker chick sitting on his lap in front of her husband and they all seem to be having a good time with the absurdity of it.
He’s behind on very welcome cultural changes, and from a family that hugs and touches a lot.
Don’t assume that’s a defense. The most generous interpretation is that he has been naively and well-meaningly low-level-sexually-assaulting people for most of his career, thinking it was charming because everyone told him it was.**
What does a person have to do to come back from that? And has he been doing it?
——
*: contempt suggests something more active than I think he has shown. YMMV.
**: this most generous interpretation requires the women in his life to not say anything (we know the men probably won’t have the same visceral reaction***). I don’t want to blame Jill Biden, but it does require a mindset closer to “oh, that’s just Joe” rather than “dear, let’s review this tape… that women you are massaging the neck of looks terrified, and she has to stay silent because her husband is getting an award from the President.”
***: This is a point in favor of diverse offices and staff, and making sure people can speak up without fear of consequences. “Focus groups show that women don’t like being groped, boss”
@CSK: There is much ridigly anglosaxon puritanical about how you American characterise a wide range of physical, as ‘fondling’ and other rahter overly charged language. That you dress it up in Left language does not change your profound puritanism. Using language like contempt rather highlights that provincial puritanism.
@Lounsbury:
You might want to learn to spell basic words such as “rigidly” and “rather’ before you comment here.
As I advised, ask any woman you know how she feels about being fondled by a stranger.
Every time I see a clip of Biden supposedly smelling hair or things like that it’s (a) in a large and loud group scenario (b) someone shorter than him and (c) he’s bending over in a friendly manner to talk to them, closer to their ear. With the kids, their parents are invariably right there.
God forbid every time I lean into someone to tell them something in a crowd setting I’m accused of “nuzzling”.
@Pylon:
Unless you bury your nose in her hair, don’t worry.