San Diego Union-Tribune

THE MUZZLED BIDEN

- The New York Times

President Joe Biden gave a speech on Bidenomics at a community college in a Washington, D.C., suburb Thursday. He ended without taking questions. He said he wished he could, “but I’m going to get in real trouble if I do that.”

Dude, you’re the leader of the free world! Who sends the president to the principal’s office?

At least this time, his staff didn’t play him offstage with a musical interlude as if he were an Oscar winner droning on too long. That’s what happened last Sunday in Vietnam. His press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, gave him the hook, abruptly ending the press conference as he was talking about his conversati­on with a top Chinese official. Oh, yeah, nothing important.

Since he became president, Biden has sharply curbed how much he talks to the press, rarely giving interviews. He limits his press conference­s mostly to duets with foreign leaders, where he can put his foreign policy relationsh­ips and experience on display. Even then, White House officials preselect questioner­s and aggressive­ly approach reporters to ferret out what topics they would focus on if they were picked. Last Friday at the White House, after backing the autoworker­s in their strike, he didn’t take questions.

There’s something poignant about watching a guy who used to delight in his Irish gift of gab be muzzled. In interviews when he was a senator and then vice president, Biden could easily give a 45-minute answer to the first question. Heaven help anyone who tried to nix the prolix pol back then.

But now, when I watch him cut himself short or get cut short by his staff, I get an image of a yellow Lab gamboling smack into an electric fence. When the president stops himself and says, “Am I giving too long an answer?” or, “Maybe I’ll stop there,” or “I’m going to get in real trouble,” he seems nervous that his handlers might yank his choke collar if he rattles on.

He no longer seems a Happy Warrior. The pol who has always relished talking to people, being around people, seems sort of lonely. When he campaigned in a limited, shielded way during COVID, he was dubbed “the Man in the Basement.” But now, even without the mask, it’s as if he’s still hidden away.

He knows his staff thinks he has a problem of popping off, and I think that has made him more timid and more cloistered. And when he’s more isolated, he seems sadder — maybe because he’s not drawing energy from crowds and journalist­s the way he used to; perhaps his overprotec­tive staff has gotten into his head. I know he gets frozen on Hunter questions, but he can’t hide from that forever, either.

Is his less-than-stellar inner circle underminin­g the boss and giving ammunition to the nasty conservati­ve storyline about how the 80-year-old president is losing it?

Biden’s more ginger gait makes Democrats flinch, but his staff reinforces the impression of a fragile chief executive by overmanagi­ng him and white-knuckling all his appearance­s. By publicly treating him as if he’s not in control of his faculties, by cutting him off midthought as if he’s faltering and needs caretaking, they play into the hands of Trumpsters. His vulnerabil­ity becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

I’ve covered Biden for 35 years. He has always been a babble merchant, prone to exaggerati­on and telling stories too good to be true, saying inexplicab­ly wacky things. It was often cleanup

He no longer seems a Happy Warrior. Is the pol who has always relished being around people lonely?

on Aisle Biden. So when he acts like this now, it shouldn’t be attributed just to aging. Certainly, he has slowed down. But his staff has exacerbate­d the problem by trying too hard to keep him in check. Americans know who Uncle Joe is, quirks and all, slower and all. Let them decide.

The president’s feelings were no doubt hurt the other day by The Washington Post column by David Ignatius, a charter member of the capital’s liberal elite, saying that Biden should be proud of “the string of wins” from his first term but not run for reelection because he “risks undoing his greatest achievemen­t — which was stopping Trump.”

I don’t disagree, but I doubt it will make a difference.

If Biden has a chip on his shoulder, it’s justified. Barack Obama blew off his vice president in 2016 in favor of Hillary Clinton, and a lot of Democrats wrote off Biden during the 2020 primaries after he lost Iowa and New Hampshire.

It was amazing, given his trajectory, that Biden fought his way to the presidency. And he thinks he has done a great job.

Besides, being an underdog is his sweet spot. And he’s got a point that he is the only one who has beaten Trump.

But Biden needs to start looking like he’s in command. His staff is going to have to roll with him and take some risks and stop jerking the reins. Let Joe out of the virtual basement.

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