As we mark 100 days of the Biden administration, what’s most surprising is not the president’s bold progressive agenda (which was highlighted all along on his ’20 campaign website). Nor is it his willingness to cast himself as the defender of democracy against the threat of MAGA autocracy (he did that before he was a candidate, warning in 2017 that the “moral fabric that holds everything up is eroding in a way that’s going to be dangerous for democratic institutions”).
No, what’s most surprising is his adherence to “message discipline.” Basically, he has put his gaffe machine in mothballs.
Who knew he was capable of that? Candidate Biden admitted early in the campaign that “I am a gaffe machine,” and we could be excused for assuming that someone in his late ’70s is not likely to amend his character traits. Cringe-worthy loquacity has always been part of the Biden brand. But there’s a wise old saying in politics – Don’t speak unless it improves the silence – and Biden appears to have embraced it when it’s most needed.
Biden, during his long pre-presidential career, frequently landed in the news for saying loopy stuff. Like the time, at a 2008 campaign rally, when he introduced a guy who was confined to a wheelchair: “Chuck Graham, state senator, is here. Stand up, Chuck, let ’em see you. Oh, God love you, what am I talking about.” Or like the time, in 2006, when he told an Indian-American supporter, “You cannot go to a 7-11 or a Dunkin’ Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accident, I’m not joking.” Or like the time he described his ’08 campaign rival, Barack Obama, as “the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean.” There was also the time, early in the ’20 campaign, when he sparred with a voter and called her “a lying dog-faced pony soldier,” which is supposedly a line from an old John Wayne or Tyrone Power movie, nobody is sure which.
But we’ve heard virtually nothing like that during Biden’s first 100 days, and if that makes him seem “boring,” that’s fine with me. Frankly, it’s a relief to have our anxieties dialed back. Earlier today we were undoubtedly “bored” when Biden tweeted that “We are choosing hope over fear. Truth over lies. Light over darkness,” because he says those lines all the time – but it sure beats four long years of reading rage-filled sewage tweeted from the nocturnal toilet. Indeed, if “gaffes” are a measure of a politician’s failure, any random Trump decree (windmills cause cancer, you need an ID to buy cereal, George Washington “took over airports,” yadda yadda) makes Joe sound like Cicero.
How has Biden managed to become so disciplined so late in the game? He clearly realizes – or has been persuaded by trusted aides to realize – that with a pandemic-scarred nation beset by long-festering problems, and with thin majorities in both congressional chambers, he’s playing for the highest stakes with virtually no margin for error. His reticence and discipline have ticked off the Washington press corps (last week he begged off a brief scrum with reporters by saying, “This is the last question I’ll take, and I’m really going to be in trouble”), but one big upside, during the first 100 days, is that right-wingers have had great difficulty getting traction against him. Assailing him for giving the First Lady a dandelion just doesn’t cut it.
One other thing. If it’s somehow deemed “boring” to stay rigorously on-message about the biggest transformational domestic agenda since LBJ, that says a lot more about our own jacked-up metabolism than it does about Joe Biden.