Biden unchained: "The pandemic is over" and "U.S. troops will defend Taiwan"
An 80-year-old accident-prone driver who won't give up the car keys but who needs guidance
A hapless situation: Joe Biden as an 80-year old accident-prone driver who won't give up the car keys, but who needs guidance
The risks of allowing President Joe Biden to talk to the press off the top of his head are well known. He would probably not have won the 2020 election had his campaign not kept strict control over his messaging. But he is a proud and stubborn man who thinks he is smarter than everyone else.
When he wants to speak off-the-cuff he will. And disaster will inevitably ensue.
In his 60-minute interview on CBS Sunday night, he said the Covid pandemic is over.1 More than 400 Americans are dying from Covid every day. The CDC is struggling to get Americans to get vaccinations and to take precautions such as masking in certain situations to avoid getting infected. Oblivious to all of that, Biden blurted out what he feels.
The mistake was that his staff let him be in such an interview without a carefully-prepared script.
On Taiwan, Biden learned nothing from his earlier statement that the U.S. would defend Taiwan against a Chinese invasion, undercutting the official U.S. position of “strategic ambiguity” that has been carefully crafted and maintained over the years. Sunday, he just blurted it out: U.S. troops will defend Taiwan.2
Biden will say and do what he feels in his gut, regardless of official U.S. policy or the strong advice of his advisers. A prime example is his decision to withdraw all troops and contractors from Afghanistan. This decision was catastrophic and probably a strong factor in Vladimir Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine.
Domestically, he and his Attorney General have delayed investigating and indicting Donald Trump and his co-conspirators for so long that Trump’s authoritarian movement seems on the verge of taking control of one or both houses of Congress in November, and poses a real threat of winning the presidency in 2024.
Meanwhile, the success of some of Biden’s policies and his rise in the polls are giving new life to his potential candidacy for re-election in 2024.
American voters don’t care about Afghanistan or the 38 million people surrendered to the Taliban as a result of the U.S. withdrawal. They don’t care about the 19 million women and girls they abandoned to a harsh medieval fate at the hands of the Taliban.
American voters are not critical of Biden’s policy toward Putin and Russia, despite the fact that we are not out of the woods yet and face a very real threat of escalation to nuclear conflict. Many if not most have tuned out.
We are in a hapless situation.
We face great threats on the world stage from Vladimir Putin and Russia, and we face great threats to democracy in America from Donald Trump and other Republicans who don’t believe in democracy.3
We are hapless because we have no leaders who, at least so far, seem up to the task of meeting these challenges. We have President Biden. He is “the president we have.”4
Nor does there appear to be any way to muster such leadership before the 2024 elections. The only hope is that Biden will step aside and allow the emergence of strong leaders through the Democratic presidential primary process. The longer he refuses to do this, the less likely it is that such leaders will emerge.
President Joe Biden is already a lame duck.
His mental abilities, never great, seem to be declining.
His judgment, always poor, remains poor.5
His stubbornness, not uncommon in people approaching their 80th birthday, is great, and growing greater. It is buttressed by an overweening sense of self-importance that seems to grow day by day.
He is like an 80 year-old grandfather who can no longer safely drive, who has had numerous recent accidents, but who fiercely refuses to give up the keys to his car.
Everyone in his household is dependent on him politically, if not on him as the family patriarch who controls all the money.
Who can take his car keys away from him?
Who would even dare to try?
So, we are hapless, a hapless nation, worse off than if we had no leader because we do have a leader, a weak leader who can only be expected to produce more damage as he drives the ship of state into further accidents.
These are not car accidents. They are accidents which, like the Afghanistan withdrawal and the subsequent war in Ukraine, do great damage not only to the ship of state and its citizens but also to the entire world.
What can be done?
No one seems to know, or even have any ideas.
The Democrats in Congress, while doing a good job in the January 6 Committee hearings, seem to have no greater goals than for themselves to be reelected and to retain control of the House and the Senate. Well, these are important goals.
But even if these goals are achieved they will not strengthen Biden’s foreign policy team or our foreign policies themselves. They may not break the hold of Trump’s authoritarian cult on the Republican Party. They will not produce indictments of Trump and his co-conspirators in time to avoid becoming flashpoints in tbe 2024 elections.
The Republicans in Congress, for their part, appear to remain devoutly devoted to Donald Trump and fixated on seizing power in the Congress and in the States no matter what the cost. Many Republican candidates refuse to say they will accept the results of the elections.
No one has any ideas on how to strengthen America’s foreign policy, or Biden’s foreign policy team.
Who indeed would even dare to try to insist that a senior family member accompany the patriarch on errands when he drives his car?
Alex Leary, “Biden Tells ‘60 Minutes’ Covid Pandemic Over, Says U.S. Troops Could Defend Taiwan In TV interview, president brushes off concerns about whether he is fit enough to run again in 2024, Wall Street Journal, September 19, 2022 (Updated 4:53 am ET).
(1) Leary, note 1 above.
(2) See also, “China and Taiwan: Before poking the Cyclops in the eye, think about the Party Congress and Ukraine,” Trenchant Observations, August 18, 2022.
See, e.g., Bret Stephens, “Our Leaderless Free World,” New York Times, July 26, 2022;
See, e.g.,
(1) “Biden is lost in a fog on Ukraine; Only strong fresh winds from younger leaders can clear the air,” Trenchant Observations, June 21, 2022.
)2) “Ukraine War, March 28, 2022: Strengthening “the president we have,” The Trenchant Observer, March 28, 2022;
See “Joe Biden 's foreign policy judgment: You can't fill a bucket with a hole in it,” The Trenchant Observer, August 31, 2021.
Seems someone is feeling hapless.
Ok, so if no one else has any solutions then what are we to do. Whom are we to vote for?