The Trouble with Biden

Turn on the Sunday news programs, especially those that are not on Fox News, and you will hear a consistent message. Listen up, America, you never had it so good. The Biden administration has saved the country and might even have saved the world. Why do you not show senile old Joe some more gratitude? What mind warp is causing you to reject the Biden presidency and even to turn your attention toward Donald Trump, himself?

Aside from the fact that political campaign officials and their surrogates are in the business of lying, there must be more to it. If the economy is so good, if inflation is so tame, what could be causing people to reject Joe Biden, or better, to fail to give him credit for our current condition?

So, Joel Kotkin asks why Joe Biden is so unpopular:

So why is Biden so unpopular? This is partly down to inflation – undoubtedly made worse by Biden’s economic agenda. But it is also due to his pandering to the so-called progressives on just about everything – from the border and climate change to LGBT issues. 

Kotkin posits that Biden’s cultural radicalism undermines his case for being a sane and sensible captain of the ship of state.

In office, he has relentlessly championed transgender issues, despite trans people accounting for less than two per cent of the US population. Most ordinary Americans don’t even believe it is possible to have a gender identity that doesn’t match your sex. So for Biden to have the Department of Education investigate the incorrect use of pronouns comes across as tremendously out of touch.

You are paying less for apples, but your child comes home from elementary school and explains that he might decide to metamorphose into a she. It’s the progressive agenda, stupid.

Practically speaking, Kotkin continues, the state of the nation is not good at all:

More important still, even as the prospect of another Trump presidency alarms many Americans, they also look aghast at the realities of Biden’s America. They have come to associate his presidency with collapsing cities, homeless encampments, largely stagnant incomes and lawlessness at the southern border. 

And Biden is governing as a radical leftist:

As an acolyte of the progressive left, Biden has shown the very same disregard for due process and democratic norms that he rightfully lays at the door of Trump. He has unilaterally cancelled student debt, pursued a phaseout of petrol cars and imposed vaccine mandates – all without congressional approval. The façade of Bidenesque moderation, so critical to his election in 2020, has fallen with a thud.

And, let’s not overlook Biden’s climate crusade, with the problems that net zero policies cause:

Instead of focussing on issues that actually matter to voters, Biden continues to pursue policies that are either deeply unpopular or relatively unimportant to average Americans. The environment, for example, is the most important issue to barely three per cent of voters. It is here where the divergence between policies advocated by the one per cent and the priorities of regular Americans is particularly acute.

And let’s not forget that Biden has brought us war in Eastern Europe, war in the Middle East, a massacre in Southern Israel and a blocked Red Sea.

Biden has shown stark ineptitude in managing foreign policy.

And, lastly, or should I say, firstly, Biden is a national embarrassment. Every time he opens his mouth, he’s sticking one or another foot in it. 

Joe Biden does not inspire confidence. He does not command respect. Inflation numbers matter little when the president cannot make it through a press conference without stumbling over his lines.

Special Counsel Robert Hur's report was devastating for the Biden presidency-- because it rang true. Not so much in terms of Biden’s serial failings with classified information, but in terms of his inability to recall important events and dates.

Biden supporters are up in arms over the fact that Hur asked Biden about his son’s death and even the dates of his service as vice president. And yet, a minimal inquiry would have told them that when neurologists assess cognitive function and brain damage they often ask rather obvious questions. If the president has forgotten the dates of such significant events, he clearly has a memory deficit. If he refuses to answer the questions, he is an arrogant fool. 

While I do not want to dismiss Kotkin's analysis of Biden’s embrace of radical leftist policies, the president’s greatest failure is cognitive. And, the simple fact that Biden embarrasses himself and embarrasses the nation is sufficient to diminish his successes and to accentuate his failings.

What did we see when Biden did a press briefing to show how well he can think. On the one side we had Biden mumbling about how he is compos mentis -- while confusing Mexico and Egypt. If it was just an outlier, we would ignore it. But, a few days earlier Biden declared that he had met with the long deceased French president Mitterand when he became president. 

On the other side, we saw Russian president Vladimir Putin sit down for two hours with Tucker Carlson and offer a clear and cogent view of Russian history and world affairs. We might disagree with Putin’s take, but he did not embarrass himself by tripping over his words or mistaking this country for that one.

The result, yesterday the New York Times turned away from Joe Biden. The editorial page opined on “the challenges of an aging president.” Maureen Dowd exclaimed, “Mr. President, ditch the stealth about health.” And, famed political strategist Paul Begala, hearing the Biden press conference, wet his bed.

The deeper meaning is that the establishment left is beginning to realize that Joe Biden is not getting any better. And thus is destined to lose.

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