NBC News last week delivered this message that the Biden White House seems to want known:
Biden is unhappy about a pattern that has developed inside the West Wing. He makes a clear and succinct statement — only to have aides rush to explain that he actually meant something else. The so-called clean-up campaign, he has told advisers, undermines him and smothers the authenticity that fueled his rise. Worse, it feeds a Republican talking point that he’s not fully in command.
Jim Geraghty’s apt response:
The reason Republicans have the talking point that Joe Biden is not fully in command of his White House is because Joe Biden is not fully in command of his White House. As Kyle Smith observed, if Biden was really in charge, he could fire anyone he felt was undermining him.
That’s exactly right: Biden could put a stop to the public walkbacks immediately by firing one or more people for publicly contradicting him. There are two overlapping reasons why he hasn’t done that: He isn’t willing to stand up to his own staff, and at some level, he grasps that they keep walking back things that he should never have said in the first place. If you have spent much time around elderly men with declining faculties, you will recognize the all-too-common pattern of lashing out because they need help for things they could once do themselves, rather than being thankful for the help.
In fact, Biden has been remarkably averse to firing anyone. It was once common practice in D.C. to make underlings walk the plank as a way of not only deflecting blame, but also showing that the president was serious about holding people accountable if they failed the voters. Donald Trump, while he was surprisingly averse to firing people directly (even after having made “you’re fired!” into his personal catchphrase on The Apprentice), at least knew how to make people miserable enough to leave, then dump blame on them as they left. Trump’s management style left a lot to be desired, and he often looked weaker by complaining about his own cabinet on Twitter instead of being more direct, but at least voters got the sense that he had limits to his willingness to tolerate being walked over by his own staff. With Biden’s job-approval ratings stuck in the low 40s and now threatening to go below that, you’d think he would try to send some sort of signal that he’s gotten the message and is demanding more. Instead, he just complains.
Say what you will for George W. Bush, he was the last president who didn’t play the game of acting as if the federal executive branch was something he was watching on TV. We could use a return to that ethos. But even aside from its desirability as a matter of good governance, Biden’s refusal to stick up for himself is terrible for his political image and standing.