If you had to boil down the essence of growing old into a few easily identified characteristics, one thing you might point to is how the elderly become less physically strong and agile. Their senses are usually less acute. They might struggle to read a menu or a sign. Their hearing isn't so good. There are similar behavioral characteristics we all recognize as coming with age. You could sum up the stereotypical cranky old man with the phrase 'you kids get off my lawn!' It's the idea that older people, men especially, can be short-tempered. They don't have a lot of tolerance for things that bother them. They lash out with relatively little provocation.

With that in mind, consider this story published today by Politico about Joe Biden behind the scenes.

During meetings with aides who are putting together formal briefings they’ll deliver to Biden, some senior officials have at times gone to great lengths to curate the information being presented in an effort to avoid provoking a negative reaction.

“It’s like, ‘You can’t include that, that will set him off,’ or ‘Put that in, he likes that,’” said one senior administration official. “It’s a Rorschach test, not a briefing. Because he is not a pleasant person to be around when he’s being briefed. It’s very difficult, and people are scared shitless of him.”

This is not the first time we've seen this reported. A full year ago, Axios published a very similar story under the headline "Old Yeller: Biden's Private Fury."

Behind closed doors, Biden has such a quick-trigger temper that some aides try to avoid meeting alone with him. Some take a colleague, almost as a shield against a solo blast.

The president's admonitions include: "God dammit, how the f**k don't you know this?!," "Don't f**king bullsh*t me!" and "Get the f**k out of here!" — according to current and former Biden aides who have witnessed and been on the receiving end of such outbursts...

He'll grill aides on topics until it's clear they don’t know the answer to a question — a routine that some see as meticulous and others call "stump the chump" or "stump the dummy."

So all those reports about Biden being "sharp as a tack" may stem from this sort of behind the scenes berating and belittling the staff. He's a real jerk to his own people who can't talk back because he's the president and that's taken as proof that he's still sharp. But it's really just proof that he's a stereotypical cranky old man. The White House completely denies it but there word isn't worth much at this point. 

The story moves on to complaints from unnamed Democrats who say the inner circle around Biden made sure that there was never any real discussion about whether or not he would run again. The people who knew the risk were also the people whose careers depended on him running.

“The fact is, there wasn’t an open dialogue about whether he should run except for the people who would benefit from him running,” said a Democratic operative close to the campaign. They described the inner circle, Donilon especially, as convinced “that this was going to be about Trump, not about Biden, and at the end of the day, people just wouldn’t vote for Trump. But here we are, we’re sitting in July, and the race is about Biden, and it’s about a trait you can’t fix.”

Finally, there's a thread that runs through this story about Jill Biden as the ultimate insider, someone doing her best to keep old man Biden from being clearly seen by the public. For instance, during his first press conference after taking office in 2021, Jill decided it was allowed to run a little too long.

When Biden’s first news conference as president was held in March 2021, it ended up running more than an hour, which was longer than aides had planned, and Biden’s performance faded somewhat near the end. After it was over, Jill Biden vociferously complained to aides, including Klain, that it was allowed to run so long, according to two of the people familiar.

Biden hasn’t done another press conference like that and has subjected himself to fewer sit-down interviews than any of his recent predecessors.

Biden has avoided interviews and press conferences and I had assumed this was coming from Anita Dunn, his top communications aide. But after reading this story I wonder if maybe Dunn is just doing what Jill Biden tells her to do.

Overall, it's not a very reassuring piece if you're a Democrat looking for evidence that the debate was just one bad night. It makes a pretty strong case that Biden's stamina under questioning is something aides have been carefully managing since he was elected nearly four years ago. His wife and close advisers have long worried how he would come across if access to him wasn't controlled just so. During Thursday night's debate we all got a good look at what they've been trying to hide.