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“He’s much calmer,” said Rep. James E. Clyburn, South Carolina Democrat and close ally. “The angst of running and the pressure of a campaign is all behind him now. Even after the election campaign the election was over, all the madness coming from the Trump camp, you don’t know how it’s all going to turn out. You might know how it’s going to end, but you’re worried about how it’s going. So whatever is behind him now.
Throughout his career, Mr Biden has been a rod for the middle of his party, more moderate in the 1990s when it was in vogue and more liberal in Obama’s day when the center of gravity shifted. .
It is motivated less by ideology than by the mechanisms for crafting a bill that will satisfy various centers of power. A ‘fingertip politician’ as he likes to say, Mr. Biden is described by his aides and friends as more intuitive about other politicians and their needs than Mr. Obama was, but less as an innovative thinker.
Despite being famous for his foot-to-mouth blunders, he can be slow to make decisions, with one meeting following one as he seeks more advice. Every morning he gets a big briefing book with dozens of tabs in a black filing cabinet and reads it, but he prefers to interact with others. During the transition, he conducted several of his briefings using Zoom at his desk in his home library in Wilmington, Del., Or at the Queen, the neighboring theater where a big screen has been installed.
He enjoys free discussions, interrupting assistants and berating them for what he deems too academic or elitist. “Pick up your phone, call your mother, read her what you just told me,” he likes to say, according to assistants. “If she understands, we can keep talking. Aides insisted on editing all abbreviations other than UN and NATO.
As a former aide put it, Mr. Biden was the guy at college who always ran study groups in the dorm, using maps with his friends, constantly interacting, while Mr. Obama was the student. monastic and scholar with oil lamps sitting in a single room browsing the books.
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