Biden is the latest president to go off script on Russia

The buzz went on for a week after President Biden whacked a hornets nest by telling a crowd of Poles that Russian President Vladimir Putin had to go.

"For God's sake, this man cannot remain in power," Biden said.

Those words were still hanging in the air when the White House began issuing clarifications and European allies started scrambling to distance themselves.

That's not the policy, White House aides said. Regime change in Moscow is not the goal in Ukraine, they said, nor is it the agreed-upon posture of NATO. And indeed it was not.

But that's familiar territory for Biden. Sometimes he just says what he thinks. And he's not the first U.S. president to do so — or to pay a price for it. When it comes to relations with Russia, you could say problematic presidential pronouncements have been a pattern for decades.

Talking about Russia was a major distraction in the presidential term of Donald Trump. Before that, communicating with Putin, or his stand-in.