Opinion | Okay, President Biden, You’re a Wise Guy

Joe Biden has never made his peace with words. His failure has less to do with his stutter, which a New York Times op-ed once posited had given the president the superpower of empathy, and more to do with the way his brain skitters from one topic to another like crushed ice on a hot frying pan before ascending skyward as a vapor.

Biden can’t open his mouth, as we all know, without inserting his foot in it, digressing, or crashing into a cognitive dead end. As a coping mechanism for these deficiencies, the president employs placeholder phrases for those times when he exhausts his mental inventory, and it can’t summon to his lips the words needed to wriggle out of a tight place. “C’mon, man” and “Give me a break,” are two of Biden’s favorite go-to phrases. When he speaks them, they magically allow him to clear his cerebral fog banks long enough to mount a semantic defense.

But Biden’s favorite, all-purpose verbal proxy appears to be “wise guy.” The president attracted the world’s scrutiny of his word choices last week when he called NBC News anchor Lester Holt a “wise guy” after Holt asked him an extraordinarily legitimate question in an interview. “Back in July, you said inflation was going to be temporary. I think a lot of Americans are wondering what your definition of ‘temporary’ is,” Holt said. “Well, you’re being a wise guy with me a little bit,” Biden responded.

In 2021, Biden calledSaturday Night Live producer Lorne Michaels a “wise guy” at the Kennedy Center Honors program. And in 2019, Biden snapped, “Yeah, don’t be a wise guy with me,” when a reporter asked him a question about the Hyde Amendment.

Biden’s barking would be excusable if he were an adoptee from the humane society kennel, but he’s the president of the United States, a former vice president, a senator for as long as anybody can remember before that. This lack of self-discipline in a civil setting makes Biden look exactly like the guy he doesn’t want to be: the sort of crotchety and defensive oldster who interprets a sporting handshake for a karate chop. Reporters deserve mockery for some of the questions, but not ones like this. It’s a terrible look.

Calling other people wise guys, it must be noted, is just a side-hustle for Biden. Mostly, he drops the phrase as a point of self-reference, denying that he’s a wise guy.

As president, he has denied acting like a wise guy in dealings with Russian President Vladimir Putin. He has denied being a wise guy while discussing Republican AIDS policy. He denied it during a CNN town hall discussing misinformation. On the campaign trail, he said he wasn’t a wise guy for considering a Republican running mate; when asked if he had advice for Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (“I wouldn’t presume to give her advice. I’m not being a wise guy.”); while talking about the Trump administration at a mayors’ conference; when talking about the wall; and when asked on the Today show if former President Donald Trump had done anything good. Earlier, Biden brandished the phrase while praising Hillary Clinton at her nominating convention (“I’m not trying to be a wise guy here. I really mean it”). We could go on and on with more examples from his TV appearances and speeches from 2010 and 2008 and 2006 and 2004, but instead let’s stop our Nexis hopscotching with a 1999 landing where Biden said at a Senate hearing, “I’m being very sincere, not, you know, a wise guy saying this. I am not a diplomat.”

But why does he deny it? It’s near to impossible to find anyone accusing him of being one. A comprehensive Nexis search failed to locate a single instance in which anybody called him that.

There is only one person who regularly calls Joe Biden a wise guy: Joe Biden himself. He uses it to dig out of holes, also generally dug by Joe Biden. During the campaign, Biden told radio host Charlamagne tha God that anybody who might consider backing Trump over him in the election “ain’t Black.” The righteous skies parted and hurled giant stones of abuse on Biden. Searching for a way out of the mess of his own making, Biden promptly confessed that he “shouldn’t have been such a wise guy” on the show.

Biden performed the same recovery stunt last year, after CNN’s Kaitlan Collins riled him with a round of shouted questions. Flipping his wig, Biden confronted Collins and told her that her questions indicated she was “in the wrong business.” After he cooled off, Biden went all sheepish again. “Maybe I shouldn’t have been such a wise guy,” he said at the airport. He also, sort of, apologized to Holt last week immediately after calling him a wise guy. “And I understand, that’s your job,” Biden said.

What to make of a politician who denies as often and with so much vehemence that he’s a wise guy? Dr. Sigmund Freud would come to a diagnosis after a brief study. This person thinks he knows it all, the doctor would observe, and he believes he’s more charming than the other saps out there. Drawing a puff on his cigar, he would note that his subject loves to talk, has a snappy answer for questions that haven’t even been asked, and is dying to share it. This is the sort of guy who, while showboating, can fall flat on his can and leap right up with a grin and say, “I was just resting!”

Yeah, Dr. Freud would conclude, it is Biden — not Lester Holt or Lorne Michaels — who is the wise guy. And his chances for recovery are excellent if only we can get him to stop denying his condition.

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Send your wise-guy comments to Shafer.Politico@gmail.com via email. My email alerts love the piece Katie Glueck wrote in 2019 about Biden gaffes. My Twitter feed would like to disassociate itself from this column. My RSS feed demands a piece about Donald Trump calling people wise guys.