Excerpts from “The Payoff” Regarding Biden

Photo Credit: Michael Stokes

Eight years ago, I wrote a book review on The Payoff, which was primarily about the difficulties of getting effective banking reform done in the first half of Barack Obama’s first term. Though written by a long-time Democratic staffer, it is not generally kind to Obama, Biden, and Clintonistas who were generally in Wall Street’s pocket, and not all that incented to be hard on the banks. The constraints on the banks were the best part of Dodd-Frank — the rest could have been handled in better ways, if it needed to be done at all.

Four years ago, I wrote a piece called They Can’t Help You, which dealt with HIllary Clinton and Trump. I feel what I wrote then is equally applicable now to Trump and Biden.

Please understand that though I am writing about Biden here, I am no fan of Trump. I will not vote for either of them. My main reason for writing this is that I think many people do not get the similarities in the personalities of Trump and Biden. Both are venal and selfish. Biden is less brash about it, at least when in public view.

The writer of The Payoff was a staffer for Biden for many years. He knew him well. I am going to give you eight quotations from the book with relatively little commentary from me. I will do it in page order. Here we go:

Ted, along with Biden’s wife, Jill, sister Valerie, brother Jimmy, and sons (when they became adults), tried to compensate for Biden’s weakness. They were the ones who exuded personal warmth towards staffers. They were the ones who called and stroked Biden’s big campaign contributors and fundraisers. They knew Biden would ignore every task he didn’t want to do and every person he didn’t want to deal with. So they filled in for him. Seen in a positive light, they were using their strengths to complement Biden’s; in a negative light, they were systematically enabling his weaknesses and worst habits.

The Payoff, page 16

Ted is Ted Kaufman, who the author describes as “Biden’s long-time chief of staff and my former boss in Biden’s senate office.”

Unfortunately for America, Obama and Biden (who pledged in his 1972 campaign never to own a stock or a bond) were both financially illiterate.

The Payoff, page 20

This is a major reason that neither of them played a significant role in financial reform. They didn’t get it. They were also allied with the Clintons, who were generally pro-Wall Street.

Note also, that Biden has owned stocks and bonds. His promises are often facile, like those of many politicians. He also will cut corners, as he did when he plagiarized the speeches of Neil Kinnock. That was not only dishonest, but was also an example of not aiming high enough — it was modestly better mediocrity. More on plagiarizing Kinnock:

The result of all this coverage was that every word Biden said publicly, or had said in the past, was being scrutinized for plagiarism or exaggeration. A particularly damaging example—indeed, the campaign’s coup de grâce—was found in a four-month-old C-SPAN video that showed Biden speaking in a kitchen in a New Hampshire home. During the Q&A session, someone asked what Biden’s grades had been like in law school. The correct answer was: not very good. It was a sore subject with Biden, and he snapped at the questioner: “I’ll put my IQ up against yours any day.” He then went on to claim that he’d graduated in the “top half” of his law class (he hadn’t); attended law school on a full scholarship (he’d received a half scholarship based on financial need with some additional assistance based in part on academics); had three degrees (he has only two; he was counting his B.A. with a double major in history and political science as two degrees); and won an international moot-court competition (the competition had been in Toronto, so that claim, at least, was true). Eleanor Clift, at the time a reporter for Newsweek, found the video (she hadn’t seen it when it originally ran) and wrote a story about it.

The Payoff, pages 57-58

The author noted that Biden was not dumb — he went to Law school, which few people do. He did finish 76th out of 85 students in his graduating class. He did graduate, which is a notable thing.

As time passed, I tried to understand why Biden had appealed to me so much in the beginning and then how I saw him after the fact—after his campaign downfall and after working on his staff for a time. In Alabama, I’d watched him train his charisma beam on people of all ages and, as far as I could tell, win them all over. In Washington, he would do the same thing with complete strangers, especially if there was any hint that they might be from Delaware. Yet, behind the scenes, Biden acted like an egomaniacal autocrat and apparently was determined to manage his staff through fear. Like Napoleon, Biden had captured his personal Toulon at a very young age. In comparison, his tentative young staff must have seemed like an army of underachievers. I decided I’d stay until I could help him regain his professional balance and then move on to something else.

The Payoff, Pages 62-63

You have to be careful with people who don’t treat their staff well, like Trump and Biden.

I looked for consolation from a friend who is another former Biden staffer, someone who had worked for Biden for six years. He said, “Jeff, the difference between Ted Kennedy, who has spent decades promoting his former staff into government jobs, and Joe Biden, is Kennedy believes in force projection.  Kennedy Democrats share an ideology. Biden is only about himself becoming president, he doesn’t care about force projection, so he never helps his former staff get jobs.” In other words, the late Ted Kennedy cultivated and promoted staff not just because he was a decent boss, but because he had an ideological agenda and the staff served it across Washington.  In contrast, Biden is a pragmatist. His ambitions, I was coming to understand, were mainly about himself.

The Payoff, page 100

I found this to be the most telling comment about Biden in the book. It points out how (at least according to the author) Biden is a taker and not a giver. That makes him very similar to Trump.

It had been more than twenty years since Biden had signed my notebook “Please stay involved in politics, we need you all.” I had—but had received precious little from Biden in return. As a lobbyist, I’d not once asked for a meeting with or favor from Biden (to his credit, he was famous for not doing them anyway).  A little personal appreciation wouldn’t kill him. Though taken aback, Dennis was sympathetic. After all, for the past twenty years, he, like Ted, had been mollifying the many dissatisfied members of the extended Biden family. 

Two weeks later, I received a handwritten note from Biden: “Jeff, you’ve always been there for me. I hope you know that I will always be there for you.” This, after “thanks for being a true friend,” was the second disingenuous note Biden had sent me. He’d never been therefor me, not in any direct way that had propelled my career or raised my standing in Washington. All he did—weeks after the fact, presumably after succumbing to pressure from Dennis—was send me one-line notes.

The Payoff, page 188

And then some more…. note that Ted Kaufman had been appointed Senator of Delaware to fill Biden’s term for two years, with the promise that he would not run for re-election.

Biden himself had been known among liberal critics as the senator from MBNA, at one time the largest credit card bank in Delaware and which had hired Biden’s son Hunter. Biden had been a leading proponent of a bankruptcy reform bill that had been favored by the credit card banks, a large employer in Delaware. I even used to hear complaints about that from Iowa voters. Now, Ted, Biden’s closest confidant, was campaigning daily against the interests of Wall Street banks (a different breed of cat than the smaller Delaware banks, which didn’t like Ted for it regardless). And while Ted would never admit it, I could tell (from hearing Ted’s half of phone conversations) that Biden secretly was cheering for Ted (the unleashed id to Biden’s ego). 

The Payoff, page 197

To those of you that are stuck and cannot declare bankruptcy, Biden was one of those who helped push that agenda.

Ted had already received so much praise that I told everyone I wanted the party to be about the staff, not Ted. We’d all worked very hard, and we deserved a chance to pat each other on the back. Someone must have leaked word to Biden, because in the middle of my emotional farewell toast to the staff, in walked the Vice President of the United States. I kept speaking as though he weren’t there, while he and his entourage slipped quietly into the back of the room. Then I introduced Ted for his speech. Predictably, Ted handed things over to Biden.  And equally predictably, Biden went on and on about how great Ted was and what a great senator he’d been. And then Biden was gone. Off somewhere being vice president, the second most powerful man in Washington.  He didn’t once mention my name and left without shaking my hand.

The Payoff, page 257

I’ve only met a US Senator once in my life. When I was 16, I remember meeting William Proxmire after he gave a talk to my high school. I have no idea how I ended up meeting him in the hall outside the gymnasium (it was just the two of us), but I was very impressed with the way he treated me with respect and listened to me. Proxmire was an unusual guy, and difficult to pin down ideologically, which made him perfect for the unusual but generally pragmatic state of Wisconsin.

Now, maybe the author wanted too much from Biden. But who doesn’t want some respect from his boss/hero?

Many paint BIden as being out of touch, old, etc. That may or may not be true. But Biden has been less than a compassionate boss to some of his subordinates (some of whom expected that they would be on his staff as Vice-President, and were disappointed).

I would simply say to you to be aware, Biden is not an avuncular guy who is always amiable to those around him. If what the author of The Payoff says is true, he is as hard on his subordinates as Trump is. People who are self-focused should not hold any significant office. That disqualifies both Trump and Biden, and that is where I end this post.