I don’t want to pooh-pooh Franklin Foer’s new book, The Last Politician: Inside Joe Biden’s White House and the Struggle for America’s Future, until I’ve read it. But let’s just say I’m not surprised that books about Joe Biden aren’t selling well. Biden has been a well-known figure on the political scene since the 1980s. Never mind his nearly four decades in the Senate; a child born when Barack Obama picked Biden to be his running mate in 2008 is now old enough to be on the verge of getting his learner’s permit in most states.

He’s sat for hundreds of interviews, although much less often in recent years. How much is there left to learn about him? What mysteries about Biden are left to unravel, other than whether he truly is “fit for duty, and fully executes all of his responsibilities without any exemptions or accommodations,” as the White House physician wrote earlier this year?

Is it really a revelation that the Biden, who turns 81 this autumn, privately admits he feels “tired”? Only if you bought into the ludicrous spin from the likes of White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre and Rep. Lisa Blunt Rochester that Biden has more energy now than he did in his forties.

Nor is it a revelation that Joe Biden poorly handled his meeting with the grieving families of the 13 US service members killed in the closing days of the American presence in Afghanistan. The families had publicly said so at the time. Many of us have pointed out that Biden’s idea of empathy is telling people who have suffered a terrible tragedy that he knows how they feel because of his own life experiences, which is rarely as consoling and reassuring as Biden thinks it is.

It’s a little interesting to hear that Biden mocked the way Obama cursed, with Biden scoffing that Obama lacked “the right elongation of vowels and the necessary hardness of consonants; it was how they must curse in the ivory tower.” But those of us who have paid attention have known that the relationship between the two men was far more prickly and contentious than the public statements and the happy narrative offered by the Democrats. Before Biden was elected, Obama offered the famous warning to another Democrat, “don’t underestimate Joe’s ability to f*** things up.” (Hey, Mr. President, is Obama cursing appropriately now?)

Judging from the reviews, Foer does address the issue of how often the White House staff often go to the press and insist the president did not mean to say what he just said.

If the former administration was a preschool, Trump was the toddler in chief. Biden is not a toddler, but Foer’s description of the rival egos adds up to a profoundly unflattering portrait of America’s gerontocratic elite. He characterizes Biden at different moments as obstinate, moody, self-pitying and undisciplined. After accidentally calling for regime change in Russia and having to do damage control, Biden plaintively asks why he is “babied” in a way John F. Kennedy never was. The obvious answer hangs awkwardly in the air.

With surprising frequency, Joe Biden is not a reliable source on the topic of the official positions of the Biden administration.

There doesn’t seem to be much of a hidden Biden, obscured behind closed doors, for Foer or any other journalist to uncover. What you see is what you get. A book-length chronicle of Biden’s first two years in office may not offer many surprises or revelations.