I can’t be the only one who has the following conversations:

“Did you see how Biden criticized Israel today? Is he turning on them?”

“I don’t know—did John Kirby say it, too?”

There are days when President Biden is the Good Cop and days when he is the Bad Cop. Sometimes on the same day. It’s not always clear whether Biden intended to say what he said, or give the impression he’s given, and it’s also often unclear whether Biden thinks he delivered the message he intended.

That’s why John Kirby drives.

On Monday, NBC reported that on at least three occasions, Biden in private has called Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu an “asshole,” apparently in frustration with Bibi’s reluctance to agree to a ceasefire or ease up in Gaza enough to get Biden’s progressive base off his back. The next day, Kirby, the retired Navy admiral and the president’s go-to spokesman on all things national security, told the press that we see Israel repeatedly “take actions … that even I’m not sure our own military would take, in terms of informing civilian populations ahead of operations where to go, where not to go. They have taken steps.”

A day earlier, it had seemed the U.S. was sending every signal it could find to warn Israel away from beginning its operation in Rafah. Kirby had the following exchange with a reporter:

Q    The President yesterday, in his conversation with Prime Minister Netanyahu, reiterated the U.S. opposition to operation—expanded operations inside Rafah to—to root out Hamas’s remaining battalions there… Does the U.S. believe that Hamas can remain in Rafah?  Is that an acceptable end game of—you know, how are the Israelis—if they can’t go into Rafah to remove Hamas, how are they supposed to get rid of Hamas from Gaza, which the U.S. has said is their end goal here?

MR. KIRBY:  Oh, we never said that they can’t go into Rafah to remove Hamas.  Hamas remains a viable threat to the Israeli people.  And the Israelis and the IDF, absolutely, are going to continue operations against their leadership and their infrastructure, as they should.  We don’t want to see another October 7th.

What we’ve said is we don’t believe that it’s advisable to go in in a major way in Rafah without a proper, executable, effective, and credible plan for the safety of the more than a million Palestinians that are taking refuge in Rafah.  They’ve — they’ve left the north, and they certainly went south out of Khan Yunis to try to get out of the fighting.

Some of this is Kirby’s ability to translate for the president, while at the same time convincingly insisting that he’s not saying what the president meant to say, but rather what the president has said all along.

The first time I saw Bob Dylan in concert, I was blown away by his stage band. Not because they were such great musicians—although they were—but because of their ability to stick with Bob. As Dylan fans know, the singer long ago stopped playing live songs that sounded identical to their recorded versions. In all the times I’ve seen Dylan live, I’ve never really been able to predict exactly where he was going to go with the next note. But if you spend all your time playing with Dylan, you do.

Biden, you may have noticed, has a tendency to improvise and to ramble. His speed has changed noticeably over the years, as has his delivery and articulation of his own memorized talking points. But no matter where Biden goes with a particular rendition, Kirby’s right there, step for step. It explains why, according to the New York Times, Kirby has begun traveling domestically with the president as well.

That’s been causing some tension with Karine Jean-Pierre, the president’s press secretary. Kirby has regularly shared the podium with Jean-Pierre, and Biden has leaned on him even more since October 7. The basic dilemma is this: Jean-Pierre is bad at the job, and Kirby is excellent at it. Gossipy media reports have noted that Jean-Pierre is bothered by the fact that her boss has noticed this.

Jean-Pierre reportedly was annoyed at being upstaged by a lower-level colleague. Biden fixed this: He gave Kirby a promotion that elevated him officially to Jean-Pierre’s level.

It’s an odd setup, to be sure. There are essentially two press secretaries. And increasingly that means that one calls on the reporters and the other answers the questions those reporters ask. In other words, there are days when it’s unclear why Jean-Pierre is there at all.

The discrepancy is most noticeable on Israel. Jean-Pierre came to the White House from the world of progressive political activism, which is overwhelmingly hostile to Israel. Jean-Pierre can repeat the president’s talking points, but it’s clear she doesn’t mean it and doesn’t like doing it. Kirby, on the other hand, gets downright theatrical at times when he talks about the evil of Hamas or the fate of the hostages. In this, he reflects his boss: Biden can get emotional about Israel, and Kirby can show that emotion. When he was a spokesman for Barack Obama, Kirby was far less animated—as, of course, was Obama.

When Jean-Pierre took over as press secretary from the more experienced Jen Psaki, Biden reportedly told her not to worry about it—“you’ll have an admiral looking over your shoulder.”

Jean-Pierre was not amused. But the arrangement remains the best personnel-related decision the president has made.