The Politics and Culture of Biden's Temper

A few thoughts on that Axios story

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

One of the most underrated Saturday Night Live skits ever starred Phil Hartman as president Reagan; the premise was that his dotting old man routine was a schtick and in reality he was the mastermind running everything, including the Iran-Contra affair:¹

If you notice, Hartman-as-Reagan isn’t just smarter out of the public eye, he’s also more short-tempered. This plays on a old trope of presidents displaying one persona in public and a different one in private.

I say “old” because in truth, the two presidents that preceded Joe Biden did not really have multiple personas. Multiple former administration officials have told me that with Barack Obama, what you saw was what you got — an even-keeled, coolly analytical guy.² As for Trump, well, there’s a reason it was so easy to write The Toddler in Chief. Trump made little effort to hide his temper tantrums. There’s a reason he talked about embracing the “mantle of anger” during the 2016 campaign. Based on the people I’ve talked to who served in the Trump administration, what we say in public was exactly what they saw in private. The 45th president is always short-fused.

This brings us to Joe Biden, and yesterday’s Axios story by Alex Thompson. In contrast to his recent predecessors, it turns out that Biden’s folksy public demeanor might occasionally be at odds with his private demeanor:

Behind closed doors, Biden has such a quick-trigger temper that some aides try to avoid meeting alone with him. Some take a colleague, almost as a shield against a solo blast.

The president's admonitions include: "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!" — according to current and former Biden aides who have witnessed and been on the receiving end of such outbursts.

The private eruptions paint a more complicated picture of Biden as a manager and president than his carefully cultivated image as a kindly uncle who loves Aviator sunglasses and ice cream.

Some Biden aides think the president would be better off occasionally displaying his temper in public as a way to assuage voter concerns that the 80-year-old president is disengaged and too old for the office.

You should read the whole thing for all the anecdotes. What interests the hard-working staff here at Drezner’s World, however, is the reaction to this story. For Biden supporters, it’s completely endearing. One of Thompson’s stories comes from the 2008 presidential campaign. Apparently a the 2008 presidential campaign when a 23-year-old fundraising staffer got into Biden’s car and said, “Okay, senator, time to do some fundraising calls.” To which Biden responded by saying: “Get the f**k out of the car.”

Based on the 14,000 social media sites I am now on, Biden fans seem to love this kind of story. Indeed, that last paragraph quoted above suggests that Biden aides believe these kind of anecdotes will make voters view him less as a doddering old man and more like the Dark Brandon of Bidenomics.

At the same time, conservative critics are crying foul. Some are arguing that the Axios story is a “thinly veiled puff piece.” Others want to point out that Biden’s temper is a problem. Byron York tweets, “There were many stories discussing the previous president's anger. How much have you read about Joe Biden's temper?” It’s not an unreasonable question to ask! If one views Biden berating his staff as a good thing but Trump screamed at his staff as a bad thing, you might just be in the tank for Joe Biden.

Or…. you might read the Axios story and find that not all presidential tempers are created equal. Thompson writes in perfect subtweet that, “Biden's temper comes in the form of angry interrogations rather than erratic tantrums. He'll grill aides on topics until it's clear they don’t know the answer to a question — a routine that some see as meticulous and others call ‘stump the chump’ or ‘stump the dummy.’” Thompson further notes that, “Some administration officials, many of whom went to elite schools, struggle with Biden's demand to ditch wonky, acronym-filled language and brief him as if they were talking to a close family member who isn't in the D.C. bubble.”

So on the one hand, nothing in this Axios story concerns me about Biden’s temperament. He mostly seems to blow off steam when his Ivy League subordinates live up to the stereotype rather than the ideal type of the educated staffer. On the other hand, I agree with York that further reporting on Biden’s temper might be warranted. This story sure seems like it that would cause Biden’s aides to high-five each other; it would be interesting to learn if and/or when Biden’s temper has hampered the ability of aides to properly staff him.

All that said, I think there’s something deeper at work in stories like this and the reaction they inspire, and it has to do with the current crisis of masculinity going on in the United States. Consider that in the past month alone a lot of powerful men have behaved like adolescents. Donald Trump continues to behave like Donald Trump. Ron DeSantis seems hell-bent on out-beclowning Trump. Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg have toyed with the idea of a cage match, followed by Musk devolving into a 12-year old at the success of Threads.³ And then there’s Jonah Hill.

What’s going on? Washington Post columnist Christine Emba has a longform piece noting that American men are facing new challenges in the 21st century:

Worrying about the state of our men is an American tradition. But today’s problems are real and well documented….

While the past 50 years have been revolutionary for women — the feminist movement championed their power, and an entire academic discipline emerged to theorize about gender and excavate women’s history — there hasn’t been a corresponding conversation about what role men should play in a changing world. At the same time, the increasing visibility of the LGBTQ+ movement has made the gender dynamic seem less stable, less defined….

Past models of masculinity feel unreachable or socially unacceptable; new ones have yet to crystallize. What are men for in the modern world? What do they look like? Where do they fit? These are social questions but also ones with major political ramifications. Whatever self-definition men settle on will have an enormous impact on society.

What does this have to do with Biden’s hidden temper? Let me proffer the following hypothesis: despite dramatic shifts in gender norms, it remains the case that powerful men getting angry are viewed differently than powerful women getting angry. With men, displays of anger, even in private, are viewed as signs of leadership. When women in positions of authority, however, are reported to have said “God dammit, how the fuck don't you know this?!,” or “Don't fucking bullshit me!” the reaction is different. Just ask Amy Klobuchar or Kamala Harris.

Reports of Biden’s temper are not just an appeal to voters worried that he’s senile; I would wager it’s also an appeal to male voters (who lean Republican) that Biden is just like them — someone who does not want to traffic in gobbledygook and occasionally gets frustrated at the system.

We will have to wait 16 months to see whether this kind of appeal works at all.

1. Side note: this may well have been the only SNL skit satirizing Reagan that really worked.

2. One former official told me about the one time they saw Obama angry, but even this exception proves the rule. He apparently exited the Situation Room streaming mad. He took a deep breath, however, and noticed some newly-installed pictures of his family that had been mounted on the wall. The anger seemed to drain from him, and he re-entered the Situation Room.

3. It cannot be stressed enough just how much Musk has done for Zuckerberg with his continued mismanagement of Twitter. Musk’s galactic-level ineptitude has completely overshadowed Zuckerberg’s expensive and unprofitable decision to plow so much money into a VR that no one wanted or desired.