Like President Bill Clinton, Joseph R.
Biden Jr. is an empathetic extrovert with
a sprawling network of friends. Like
President George W. Bush, he maintains
strict personal discipline (for Mr. Biden,
that meant Peloton rides and protein
shakes this year, to offset an ice cream
habit).
Like President George H.W. Bush, he
respects American political traditions,
and with President Barack Obama, he
shares eight years of history, experi-
ences and some Washington battle scars.
But when Mr. Biden enters the White
House in January, after four turbulent
years of the Trump presidency and a cha-
otic transition period, he will bring with
him his own set of instincts.
He has honed the ways he operates in
Washington over 36 years as a senator
and eight years as vice president. Based
on his actions and attitudes throughout
his most recent 18 months as a presiden-
tial candidate, here are four key ele-
ments of how Mr. Biden may approach
governing come January, 48 years after
he first arrived in Washington.He consults experts, elected officials and
his inner circle.
Mr. Biden relied this year on a blend of
expert opinion and conversations with
elected officials across the country as he
formulated his plans to confront the ex-
traordinary public health and economic
crises at hand, offering a glimpse of the
kinds of input that may influence his de-
cision-making as president.
When the pandemic hit, Mr. Biden’s in-
stinct was to get on the phone.
Even though he had no power to enact
policy, Mr. Biden made a point of main-
taining relationships with mayors, sena-
tors and governors, calling them often
and sprinkling his public remarks with
references to what he had learned about
their experiences. It was in keeping with
the role he played as vice president,where he often was the Obama adminis-
tration’s best liaison to Capitol Hill, and it
reflected the respect that the longtime
Delaware senator has for other elected
officials.
At the same time, a core part of Mr. Bi-
den’s message throughout the general
election was that, as president, he would
listen to the experts when it came to con-
fronting the nation’s greatest challenges.
Some allies thought he did too much of
that during the campaign, believing that
he could have devoted more time, in per-
son or virtually, to key battleground
states rather than to the hours he spent
receiving briefings on the virus and the
economy even in the final days of the
race.
But now he will enter the White House
with an established cadre of advisers on
those key subjects.
Yet for all of the expert advice Mr. Bi-
den will have available to him from the
White House, his outlook is also influ-
enced, in broad terms, by a core inner cir-cle of aides, advisers and a few family
members — namely, his wife and his sis-
ter — who have offered counsel to him
for decades.
Last week, he named Ron Klain, an op-
erative who first started working for Mr.
Biden in the 1980s, to be his chief of staff.
But he has also promised to assemble a
diverse administration.
“You want the steadiness, the experi-
ence and the confidence of those old
hands that have been around,” former
Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said of
Mr. Biden’s calculations around his ad-
ministration. “But you also want new en-
ergy, new ideas, fresh faces, to bring
them up. They’re the next generation. I
think that’s the way Joe will look at it.”He can be loose with deadlines.
At key inflection points throughout the
campaign, Mr. Biden wanted to take in as
much information as possible.
And then, he waited.
Mr. Biden ultimately is decisive, his al-
lies argue, saying that he is not the kind
of person to second-guess or to walk
back a promise once he has arrived at a
deal in a negotiation. But on major politi-
cal and personnel decisions, at least, he
has demonstrated that he cannot be
rushed.
Nowhere was this clearer than during
the vice-presidential search process,
when Mr. Biden missed one self-imposed
deadline after the next to name his run-
ning mate, before ultimately deciding on
Senator Kamala Harris. In her, he found
someone he trusted to be a loyal ally, who
shared his outlook on governing and who
also possessed political strengths that he
lacked.
That dynamic may be instructive for
how his cabinet member announce-
ments and other personnel choices play
out in coming weeks, as Mr. Biden thor-
oughly assesses his options and also
grapples with the political constraints of
a potentially Republican-controlled Sen-
ate.
People who have worked with Mr. Bi-
den or know him personally describe
him as a gut politician in some ways, but
one whose instincts are shaped by con-
versations with close advisers and allies,
by peppering aides with questions and
by soliciting a range of opinions, whether
from experts in a particular field or from
trusted friends and supporters across
the country.
“I think he truly tries to get input, get
all the perspectives, understand the pros
and the cons,” Representative Debbie
Dingell, Democrat of Michigan, said of
his decision-making habits broadly. “He
had people that gave him the perspec-
tives of different people, and then he
would make his own decision.”
Mr. Biden has suggested that he may
name a handful of cabinet member
choices by around Thanksgiving — set-
ting up an early test of whether his self-
imposed deadlines are any more accu-
rate as president-elect than they were
when he was a candidate.He’s a man of the Senate at heart — but
whether the Senate likes him back is an
open question.
Mr. Biden has been vice president of the
United States, an elder statesman of his
party and now, president-elect.
But in many ways he is, at heart, still a
senator from Delaware, who sometimes
slipped into the parlance of floor
speeches (he referred to Senator Eliza-
beth Warren on the debate stage last
year as his “distinguished friend”) and
cited Senate mentors from decades ago
on the campaign trail throughout the
2020 race.
His experience in the Senate defined
his political outlook — one that prizes
consensus, civility and bipartisanship as
essential to at least some progress — and
helps explain why he will enter the White
House with great respect for Congress.His insistence that he could “lower the
temperature” politically was a central
part of his pitch throughout the race, and
he relished dismissing Democrats who
called such an outlook naïve.
The question is whether Mr. Biden’s
views will be reciprocated by Republi-
cans on Capitol Hill, some of whom are
currently refusing to recognize the legiti-
macy of his election.
“He knows the Senate — these are per-
sonal friends of his, unlike other presi-
dents that didn’t have that type of rela-
tionship,” said former Senator John
Breaux, Democrat of Louisiana. “To an
extent, Obama didn’t, either. Joe has
been there over 30 years. He knows the
leaders on the Republican side. I think
he’s going to be reaching out to them, as
well as Democratic leadership.”
When Mr. Biden declared victory last
weekend, he claimed that “part of the
mandate” he had received from the
American people was to facilitate finding
common ground.
“They want us to cooperate in their in-
terest, and that’s the choice I’ll make,” he
said. “And I’ll call on Congress, Demo-
crats and Republicans alike, to make that
choice with me.”
Whatever the response, Mr. Biden has
also offered a long list of executive ac-
tions he plans to take on his first day in
office.He has a mandate to be himself.
After four years with President Trump in
the White House, Mr. Biden promises, in
many respects, a return to the past
norms and traditions that have typically
defined the office.
Do not expect to see Mr. Biden use his
Twitter account to fire members of his
cabinet, chime in on television news cov-
erage or make sudden policy pronounce-
ments. In fact, his campaign team
claimed to disdain Twitter, arguing that it
was a poor measure of the views of most
Americans.
Do expect to see a president who em-
braces the traditional role of serving as
consoler in chief in times of tragedy. Mr.
Biden’s ability to connect with people ex-
periencing grief is one of his most dis-
tinctive attributes as a politician, follow-
ing a car accident that killed his first wife
and a baby daughter in 1972, and the
death of his elder son, Beau Biden, in
2015.
On Veterans Day last week, he visited
the Philadelphia Korean War Memorial,
and he takes care to show respect for
those who serve in uniform.
Rarely did Mr. Biden grow as visibly
angry on the campaign trail as when he
cited Mr. Trump’s reported comments
about fallen soldiers. Mr. Biden carries in
his suit jacket a card that lists, among
other things, the precise number of U.S.
troops who have died in Iraq and Afghan-
istan, and he routinely ends his remarks
by saying, “May God protect our troops.”
But for all of Mr. Biden’s regard for
American institutions — the courts, Con-
gress, the military — he is also a colorful
figure in American politics with a vivid
personality that Americans and world
leaders will now see up close.
He is known for his empathy but is also
capable of growing so defensive that dur-
ing a testy exchange, he once appeared
to call a voter “fat” (which his campaign
disputed) and issued a challenge to do
push-ups. He is brimming with “Bi-
denisms” and with assorted wisdom that
he attributes to various relatives and
long-dead colleagues, and is deeply
proud of his Irish Catholic roots in Scran-
ton, Pa.
“Look me over,” Mr. Biden has urged
voters over the years. “If you like what
you see, help out. If not, vote for the other
guy.”
This time around, enough American
voters liked what they saw. Now they,
and the world, are about to get a much
closer look.Joseph R. Biden Jr., 48 years after he came to Washington, will bring his own set of instincts to the White House.
STEPHEN CROWLEY/THE NEW YORK TIMESHow Will Biden Lead?
Look to His Campaign
A Civil, Deliberate Approach Shaped by Decades of Service
By KATIE GLUECK
and THOMAS KAPLANThe president-elect, with Vice President-elect Kamala Harris last week in Wil-
mington, Del., has relied on experts in forming his plan to combat the pandemic.AMR ALFIKY/THE NEW YORK TIMESMr. Biden in Iowa in 2019. “If you like what you see, help
out,” he has told voters. “If not, vote for the other guy.”
RUTH FREMSON/THE NEW YORK TIMES
Mr. Biden’s ability to connect with people experiencing
grief is one of his most distinctive attributes.ELIZABETH FRANTZ FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES‘I think he truly tries to get input, get all the
perspectives, understand the pros and the cons.’
Representative Debbie Dingell, Democrat of Michigan,
on President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s decision-making.18 SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 15, 2020
N