OPINION:
Democrats hold out compassion as their No. 1 calling card. Yet over and over again, it is most often Democratic politicians who treat their staffs with contempt.
The latest example comes from Axios, which reported that behind the scenes, President Biden blows up at his staff, shouting obscenities.
Some presidential aides try to avoid meeting with him alone; they bring a colleague along to help defuse the situation.
In the same vein, Vice President Kamala Harris, another compassionate Democrat, treats her staff so poorly that her staff turnover is unprecedented.
“Critics scattered over two decades point to an inconsistent and at times degrading principal [Harris] who burns through seasoned staff members who have succeeded in other demanding, high-profile positions,” The Washington Post reported.
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, a Democrat who holds herself out as caring about the little people, treats her Secret Service agents with such contempt that being assigned to her detail is considered a form of punishment and the worst assignment in the Secret Service.
As revealed in my book “The First Family Detail,” the former presidential candidate blows up at agents who are driving her if they go over a bump in the road.
When Mrs. Clinton was first lady, “we were basically told, the Clintons don’t want to see you, they don’t want to hear you, get out of the way,” a former Secret Service agent says. “If Hillary was walking down a hall [in the White House], you were supposed to hide behind drapes used as partitions. Supervisors would tell us, ‘Listen, stand behind this curtain. They’re coming,’ or ‘Just stand out of the way, don’t be seen.’”
When Mr. Biden was vice president, he would swim naked in his pool in Wilmington, Delaware, and at the vice president’s residence in front of female Secret Service agents, offending them.
Mr. Biden also had a habit of deciding on the spur of the moment to go back to Wilmington, often several times a week, making it impossible for agents who accompany him to plan their lives outside of work.
Because of Mr. Biden’s lack of consideration, being assigned to his detail was considered the second-worst assignment in the Secret Service after being assigned to protect Mrs. Clinton.
“Biden likes to be revered as everyday Joe, and that’s his thing,” an agent who was then on Mr. Biden’s vice presidential detail told me. “But the reality is no agents want to go on his detail because Biden makes agents’ lives so tough.”
Democrat Jimmy Carter was so nasty that he told his Secret Service agents when he was president he did not want them to say hello to him on his way to the Oval Office.
On a regular basis, President Lyndon Johnson, another compassionate Democrat, would tell Secret Service agents they were fired.
When Johnson was vice president, he was late for an appointment with President John F. Kennedy and ordered a Secret Service agent to drive up on the sidewalk to bypass traffic on the street.
“Johnson said to jump the curb and drive on the sidewalk,” former agent Chuck Taylor says. “There were people on the sidewalk getting out of work. I told him, ‘No.’ He said, ‘I told you to jump the curb.’ He took a newspaper and hit the agent who was driving on the head. He said, ‘You’re both fired.’”
To be sure, Republicans can be as nasty toward their staff as Democrats are. At Mar-a-Lago and in the White House, former President Donald Trump would engage in vicious attacks on staff if he thought they had screwed up or not carried out his wishes. And in contrast to Mr. Biden and Ms. Harris, former President Barack Obama treats his Secret Service agents with consideration and respect, according to Secret Service agents I have interviewed.
But given that Democrats hold themselves out above all as compassionate and fashion their policies around that precept, their hypocrisy when treating staff with disrespect demands to be exposed.
“You can easily judge the character of others by how they treat those who can do nothing for them or to them,” publisher Malcolm Forbes once said.
The poor character of presidents like Lyndon Johnson translated into the kind of flawed judgment that led to the continuing fruitless prosecution of the Vietnam War when American security interests were not at stake.
Whether choosing a friend or a new employee, we look for signs of good character. But when it comes to voting for president, we tend to ignore character failings and focus instead on what candidates promise.
Mr. Biden gets an A-plus for pretending to be compassionate and claiming he will help the working man and woman. His character as seen by Secret Service agents and how he treats staff is another matter.
• Ronald Kessler, a former Wall Street Journal and Washington Post investigative reporter, is the New York Times bestselling author of “The First Family Detail: Secret Service Agents Reveal the Hidden Lives of the Presidents.”
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