‘A President With a Short Fuse’: NY Times Deep Dive Explores Biden’s Little-Known ‘Quick Temper,’ Profane Outbursts

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The New York Times took a derisive tone toward President Joe Biden with a Friday story critical of his allegedly slow, “Socratic” leadership style of leadership.

“Quick decision-making is not Mr. Biden’s style,” Times reporters Michael Shear, Katie Rogers, and Annie Karni wrote in the piece. “His reputation as a plain-speaking politician hides a more complicated truth. Before making up his mind, the president demands hours of detail-laden debate from scores of policy experts, taking everyone around him on what some in the West Wing refer to as his Socratic ‘journey’ before arriving at a conclusion.”

Highlighting his age, the reporting trio added, “On policy issues, Mr. Biden, 78, takes days or weeks to make up his mind as he examines and second-guesses himself and others. It is a method of governing that can feel at odds with the urgency of a country still reeling from a pandemic and an economy struggling to recover.”

They also claimed Biden’s contemplative demeanor led to his advisers being “peppered with sometimes obscure questions,” with the advisers allegedly grousing that “avoiding Biden’s ire … means not only going beyond the vague talking points that he will reject, but also steering clear of responses laced with acronyms or too much policy minutiae, which will prompt an outburst of frustration, often laced with profanity. ‘Let’s talk plain English here,’ he will often snap.”

Times reporting was especially critical of Biden’s predecessor, former President Donald Trump. However, the publication has expressed more nuanced — and sometimes conflicting — opinions about the White House’s current occupant, and the authors on Friday’s story constituted a particularly eclectic mix of opinions. Shear coauthored a December story that claimed Biden had “frustrated” liberals with his “centrist” Cabinet, while Karni — just four months later — said that Biden, whom she called “a lifelong centrist,” had “moved leftward with his party” to drive “the biggest expansion of American government in decades.”

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