My Christmas present to myself is to come clean and say it:
I am disappointed and angry with Joe Biden, Jill Biden, and Biden's senior staff for lying to us.
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| Gifted article: The Wall Street Journal |
I watch with dismay Republicans who consider themselves good patriotic Americans, but who still find a way to excuse a president who attempted to overthrow an election to stay in office. Trump plotted to create fake electors. He tried to intimidate his vice president into discarding electoral votes and accepting forged ones as equivalent. And that is okay? What is wrong with those Republicans, I wonder?
But it is time for self-reflection. Joe Biden carried out his own Big Lie. That isn't okay, either.
Joe Biden was in self-denial. Jill Biden saw Joe's condition. His senior White House staff saw it yet manipulated his schedule to do a workaround. The Wall Street Journal described his handlers, his re-scheduled meetings, his limited schedule of good moments and bad ones to hide his condition from the public. The staff knew all too well. But they forged ahead anyway with plans for a second term.
Biden has dropped out of sight. He is going through the motions. Trump and Elon Musk are speaking and leading like a president now, not Biden. There is a story to tell about the economy, about immigration, about nominations to the courts, about keeping the government open. It is an obligation of the president to explain and frame the state of the nation. Trump is the one doing it.
Biden is coasting on the muscle-memory of a long career in politics, but he isn't remotely competent to represent policy leadership for another four years. He has abandoned the communication part of the president's job. His key staff cosseted him. They manipulated the Democratic primaries to make sure that Biden and only Biden could represent the Democratic Party. They held Democrats hostage: Biden or nobody. And Biden had faded so much they needed to hide him.
Back in 2019, I wrote about my troubling observation that Joe Biden had a teleprompter for his stump talks in Iowa and New Hampshire. It is as if an elite bicyclist came to the Tour de France equipped with a bicycle with training wheels. It was a gigantic "tell." I saw him in person and up close a half dozen times in 2019. Biden was marginal then, but he was safe, and he wasn't Trump.
The presidency -- and the years -- aged him. When I saw him in 2023 at a high-dollar fundraising event in Portland, there was a rule: no cameras, no recordings. Biden could not be trusted not to fall into that brain-diminished look he had at the June debate.
Joe Biden is no longer fully responsible for himself. It was up to Jill, and she failed him and us. One or two public resignations by staff might have brought the issue to light. There would be a public discussion, as befits a self-governing nation. His staff failed us.
The Biden administration sabotaged its own legacy, the 2024 election, and the Democratic brand. Does Trump lie flagrantly and endanger the republic? Yes. Shame on him. But so did Biden and his team.
I realize that this post isn't the usual light-hearted "merry holiday season" message. But I offer it as a gift this Christmas Eve. Americans can face the truth. Trump lies to us, but so did Joe Biden.
MAGA people are still in thrall to Trump, so they are stuck defending the indefensible. But Democrats, having confronted the truth, can move on. They can rededicate themselves to being square with the public. Someone will emerge to do that.
I am optimistic.
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13 comments:
The debate with Trump showed the reality. I remember watching it with a sinking heart, knowing the truth of his condition. It wasn’t ageism, it was diminished cognitive ability. I would have voted for him reluctantly but he would have lost, he was too diminished. That was why I was so hopeful with Harris who I viewed as great. Unfortunately the country seems unwilling to elect a woman for president.
On another note two good games will be played on Christmas. Perhaps the country can unite around football. Go Hawks, go Ducks!
Personally, I thought Biden was diminished in 2016. If we had ranked voting in the primary, he would have been at the bottom of my list. But even in his present state, I would far prefer him to the traitorous, criminal madman we have now. Even better would be a highly qualified woman of color, but the U.S. obviously isn’t tired enough yet of watching the big, fat liar blunder around golf courses in his unpresidented reality show.
This reminds me of the 1980 film Kegemusha about a powerful Japanese warlord who is dying and uses a political decoy to deceive his enemies into thinking he is still alive. The “stunt double” imposter is in reality a common criminal, with zero abilities, but all the generals keep his true identity and competence a secret through sleight of hand. But these secrets only last so long and (spoiler alert) it ends badly as most leadership situations based on falsehoods generally do.
Great movie by the way.
My take is there is no moral high ground by either party anymore. Not even a pretense. So who do you trust when everyone lies?
Thank you, President Biden, for the recent commutations of 37 death sentences. Also, thank you, President Biden, for lowering drug costs, the CHIPS and Science Act, the infrastructure law, for appointing qualified judges, for gun safety legislation, for ... . The list is very long. Even great Presidents make mistakes. Save your anger for those who voted for the insurrectionist.
Woulda...Coulda...Shoulda...
Be careful of false equivalency. Both sides are NOT the same, the difference is in expectations and when Democrats fail it's a much farther fall.
The road to Hell, as they say...
Ah yes, the modern version of Bread and Circuses.
Trump’s second term promises to deliver historic threats to US press freedom. He told a rally on the eve of the election that he “wouldn’t mind” if an assassin shot the journalists standing in front of him. Ahead of the election, he also signaled his desire to jail journalists, hunt down their confidential sources, cancel the broadcast licenses of major networks and criminalize work to counter disinformation.
It seems pretty obvious which party is currently the bigger threat to truth.
Both sides are never the same.
With each one's results there is both good and bad.
The political system is broken, and most difficult to repair.
In the future, unfortunately, we can only hope there is more good than bad.
Biden gave us a few good things. So will Trump.
If Harris had prevailed, the only guaranteed outcome was more word salad. She wasted her opportunity.
Harris respects the rule of law. Trump doesn't. He also sounds deranged. It's hard to imagine anything good coming from that.
And Rep. Granger (R, TX) is finishing her term from a memory care facility.
"And did we tell you the name of the game, boy?
We call it Riding the Gravy Train ..."
Pink Floyd, Have a Cigar
A tired, generally good-natured dotard made way for a dullard with enough energy to sustain malignant tendencies.
The questioned is whether Jill Biden and certain Democrats could have prevented this by not fudging a second run.
All of this talk about how the Democrats hid Biden’s senility is getting old…. 😱😀
Merry Christmas, Peter! I mostly agree with you but I think there’s a deeper psychological component to this than mere dishonesty. The Bidens were just not able to face the reality that a second Biden term would have started well enough but gradually unraveled. There are many people, mostly men, whose identity is so tied to their work and their public status that they can’t face life without it. It puzzles me that Biden falls into this category because he’s such a family guy who seems to enjoy many things in life besides politics. But alas, he and Jill deluded themselves. But Biden’s experience and judgment are nothing to sneeze at; he can make a better decision for our country on his worst day than the crazy narcissist who’s coming in January. But he should have known that the public facing part of his job was as important as the behind the scenes piece. Someone who can clearly articulate the full panoply of policies and aspirations for our country is sorely needed. Bring on Gavin Newsom.
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