“I’ll tell ya one thing, and I’m not ashamed to say it,” to borrow from my favorite Sopranoes antagonist, Phil Leotardo, “but my estimation of Chris Whipple as an author just plummeted. ” His Gatekeepers, a history and assessment of the office of chief of staff to the president, was one of the most informative and interesting books on the White House I’ve ever read, and I remarked that it was refreshingly nonpartisan. The Fight of his Life is not: it’s more like Bush Country: How George Bush Became the 21st Century’s First Great Leader — While Driving Liberals Insane, but written from the other side of the aisle. It’s essentially a retelling of how Biden responded to events in 2020 – 2022 and what he attempted to get done. I read this chiefly because my opinion of Biden became unhealthily charged after he took office, despite my having liked him as vice president, and my being relieved he was the Democratic nominee. Whipple’s account does a good job of reminding the reader of the humanity of the man behind the desk — but not for anyone else. Anyone opposed to Biden’s programs or policies is a Trump cultist, ‘reality-denier’, etc, and I continued reading only because Whipple had astonishing access to both Biden and his first chief of staff, conducting long interviews (in person and over email) with both, and I wanted to get a better sense of the man in office — not just the character in those golden Obama-Biden memes in the final months of Obama’s administration. It’s telling that of the 28 highlights I made in the Kindle version of this, 25 of them had my added notes, usually factual disputes or my snarky reactions to Whipple’s cavalier narrative. Whipple sharply criticizes the vaccine rollout in 2020, for instance, despite the fact that in March and April of that year, everyone was claiming it could be two years before vaccines were ready, and the fact that this was a novel event. I won’t ever argue that Trump’s administration was not disorganized to the point of incompetence, but I don’t know that any administration could have gotten its act together and started mass distribution so quickly and efficiently as to avoid any criticism whatsoever. Whipple also writes that Trump had transformed the Secret Service into some loyalist praetorian guard, so Biden was afraid to say anything around them — but as Ron Kessler noted in First Family Detail, Biden had an acrimonious relationship with the S.S. even as vice president.

The majority of the book sticks exactly to the establishment line, so unless you don’t watch or read any news at all, and hide away from the world in a remote cabin except for the sending the odd letter-bomb, you’re already aware of what Whipple has to say. The most interesting part of the book came at the beginning, where we find Trump and his supporters in denial about losing the election, so much so that there wasn’t a dedicated transition team: only one man (Chris Liddell) in the administration took on that responsibility, and out of feelings of public duty rather than personal preference. According to Whipple’s account, he wanted to resign repeatedly, especially after January 6, but was urged to remain to “land the plane”, so to speak. Despite Trump’s intransigence and general unhelpfulness, Liddel and the Biden team were able to get the next administration off smoothly on January 20. My next favorite part was Biden telling Putin he’d looked him in the eyes and believed he had no soul, and Putin responding, “We understand each other.” I don’t know if that’s remotely true or not (it sounds too similar to Bush looking Putin in the eyes in 2000 and believing they could work together), but it sounds hilarious. Anyhoo, if you watch CNN or read The Washington Pravda, you already know the majority of what Whipple has to say and how he feels about it.

This book has its merits — Biden trying to use his struggle about his own son’s death to minister to suffering parents, for instance — but they’re overshadowed and marginalized by Whipple writing purely for the MSNBC Book Club.