After all, the flight only lasted 25 minutes. He was returning home to Delaware over the weekend, in part to have his orthopedist x-ray his foot. And, unlike his more recent predecessors, Biden was already familiar with the unique combination of executive flair and military rigor aboard the presidential jet, having flown more than a million miles aboard Air Force Two.
Then, like a tired passenger on a space shuttle, he spent most of the flight reading the newspaper.
“It’s a great honor,” he told reporters who asked about his debut trip aboard Air Force One, “but I didn’t think about it, to tell you the truth.”
As Biden settles into a job, he has been looking for three decades intermittently for the daily routine of being president – with a phalanx of Secret Service agents, regular updates on the country’s top secrets and an ever-present press – – came more naturally for him than for his more recent predecessors.
He established a regular schedule, including breakfast in the morning with the first lady, meetings and phone calls from the Oval Office starting just after 9 am and returning to his residence at 7 pm. As he walks home along the Colonnade, he is often seen carrying a pile of manila folders or manila folders under his arm. He even brings a brown leather briefcase to the office.
Finding your own way
Unlike his more recent predecessors – night owls who spent their dark hours reading briefing materials (President Barack Obama) or watching television (President Donald Trump) – Biden is more of an early night type. He continued the tradition of reading letters from Americans, a handful of which he joins with the information materials he brings home at night. Recently, they focused on the pandemic; Biden also spoke on video conference with fired businessmen and employees facing the economic crisis.
Biden spent a lot of time in the White House as vice president, navigating the west wing corridors and administrative policy for eight years as Obama’s number two. He spent more time working in Washington than any president in decades. His adaptation period inside the executive mansion was minimal.
“It feels like I’m coming home,” he said as he entered the White House on the day of his inauguration. Although he had never lived in the building before, it was a kind of return for a man who had wanted to live on 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue for years.
He found his old family home, going to his old West Wing office one day last week to show his new vice president the window spot where his wife wrote him a Valentine’s Day greeting in 2009.
He also made surprise visits to other offices in the building, asking employees they are working with or consulting them on specific issues related to his Covid-19 aid plan.
He wasted little time showing off his new activities to his former colleagues in the Senate, inviting nearly a quarter of all senators to the Oval Office during his first three weeks of work to talk about his Covid-19 aid plan and a new infrastructure package. .
And he was not discouraged by the band of reporters who track his every move. He was more willing to answer shouted questions than Obama, assessing his predecessor’s impeachment trial, even when the White House insisted he was focused on other things.
The President’s Daily Summary, a highly secretive update on the country’s top intelligence services, reoccurred daily after happening only sporadically under Trump. Entered the Oval Office by Vice President Kamala Harris – who used an iPad to receive the briefing, like Obama – Biden is run by a number of intelligence professionals.
He expressed a preference for a fireplace built into the fireplace in the Oval Office and sometimes adds wood to keep it burning. His dogs, two German shepherds named Major and Champ, sometimes join him.
Structure and routine
His days are more structured than those of Trump, whose advisers have begun to block large portions of “executive time” to accommodate his television viewing and phone calls. Biden’s meetings are more routine, although they usually last longer than planned. The door to the Oval Office is not considered open to anyone, as it sometimes did under Trump.
Staff meetings, which begin before 8:00 am Eastern time every day of the week, are a combination of personal conferencing and video conferencing, while the west wing remains understaffed due to Covid-19 precautions. In the last days of the Trump administration, which did not make much use of videoconferencing during the pandemic, cameras were installed on desktops for the incoming team.
When Biden is unable to meet with an officer or Cabinet secretary in person, a large screen is placed in the Oval Office for the individual to participate, as Transport Secretary Pete Buttigieg did this week for an infrastructure session. Buttigieg was isolated after one of his security officers tested positive for coronavirus. His face appeared on the screen in front of the Resolute Desk.
The screen was also used to display graphs and tracking data for the coronavirus pandemic during meetings with federal health officials.
On weekends, Biden continued his routine of attending public mass in Washington at the Holy Trinity Catholic Church in Georgetown and in his home parish in Delaware – occasions that advisers say will allow him to return to normal life, at least for one hour. After a walk, he stopped at a bagel store; authorities expect him and the first lady to be more frequent customers of Washington’s restaurants as soon as the pandemic passes.
More than any recent first couple, Joe and Jill Biden have demonstrated an affectionate relationship publicly, which extends to private moments spent together at the White House residence. For the first time in decades, there are no children living in the building, leaving the 55,000 square foot mansion for both. Jill Biden recently kissed the president goodbye before her first flight aboard Marine One.
The president traveled to Camp David for the first time since he took office over President’s Day weekend – but even the mountain retreat was familiar after many trips there as vice president.
Biden said before leaving that he planned to “just go out with the family and do what we always do”, which included playing Mario Kart in the arcade inside one of the cottages with his granddaughters, who bought him a hat with the presidential seal and embroidered with her name to him: Pop.
Still, even for someone who knows presidential life well, there are some improvements that come with the main job.
“It is the same plane we had as vice president, only much more pleasant in terms of the interior,” said Biden after his first trip on Air Force One, which was on board a smaller jet than the main presidential plane because the shortest run in Delaware.
He will have his first chance to fly the iconic Air Force One, a military version of a Boeing 747, on Tuesday when he travels to Milwaukee for a visit to CNN – his first public event in the country since taking office.
Even Biden will probably drop his newspapers to savor that moment.