Jim Geraghty of National Review Online ponders President Biden’s history of delivering mixed messages about treating people with respect.
Two other thoughts on the Axios report that President Biden “has such a quick-trigger temper that some aides try to avoid meeting alone with him”…
First, perhaps this isn’t any sign of aging or some recent change in Biden. Back in 2012, Jeff Connaughton, a Biden Senate staffer, wrote a tell-all book that described his former boss as an “egomaniacal autocrat” who was “determined to manager his staff through fear.”
Connaughton offered an account of working for Biden to George Packer:
“But if you just worked your [butt] off for him for a few years, he ignored you, intimidated you, sometimes humiliated you, took no interest in your advancement, and never learned your name.
“‘Hey, Chief,’ he’d say, or ‘How’s it going, Cap’n,’ unless he was ticked at you, in which case he’d employ one of his favorite terms for male underlings: ‘dumb f–k.’
“‘Dumb f–k over here didn’t get me the briefing materials I needed.’ It was both noun and adjective: ‘Is the event leader a Democrat or a Republican? Or are you too dumb f–k to know?’”
So perhaps hurling profanity-laden criticism upon the staff is just par for the course from Biden. But even if this is a longstanding Biden managerial bad habit, it is at odds with the standard he expects of his staff. Shortly before Biden swore in dozens of appointees and staffers on Inauguration Day, he told them:
“I’m not joking when I say this if you are ever working with me and I hear you treat another colleague with disrespect, talk down to someone I promise you I will fire you on the spot, on the spot. No if, and’s or buts.”
