Lately in this year of 2024, things have gone kaboom for super-ambitious Joe Biden even though it was just a few years ago in his half-century in politics that he was elected president. It was at least partly because he and his multiple faults hid out in a basement by way of quiet campaigning, just as his trouble now is that some of those faults are out in the open.
Yes, it’s true that the COVID outbreak could have made open-air hustle and bustle dangerous to Biden’s health as well as to his reputation through more action in tune with his character. After all, he had to drop out of one of his two previous presidential campaigns because of plagiarism attempting to convey exceptionalism. Having him stay relatively quiet and pretty much out of sight, on the other hand, seemed to actually further the impression of a moderate, thoughtful, calm, cool guy.
It also helped that he was running against Donald Trump. Here, after all, was a love-him-or-hate-him demagogue who was loved by enough voters to break voting records in all past presidential races and hated by enough contrary voters for Biden to get even more votes, winning the race. The fear lately has been that the choice of either one of these men as president this year could be a national disaster.
As president, Biden has been hiding out a lot in the Oval Office and his home in Delaware instead of a basement, holding fewer press conferences than any president in years, for instance, even though the relatively few public glances at him have revealed a lot.
When he goes on the road, he sometimes doesn’t know where he is. He can’t remember names of people in his administration. Far more important, he has been ideologically captured by leftist, incompetent politicians and advisers as shown in his role in current Afghanistan misery, southern border mayhem, Iran’s terrorist adventures and Israel’s current plight. He has challenged the Constitution. His spending trillions to help in COVID recovery after sufficient trillions had already been spent in the Trump years gave us inflation now slowing down even though prices will not fall and debt threatens the future.
What’s unfortunate for him lately is an ABC News poll showing almost 86% of Americans saying that his being 81 is too old for a second term. On top of that, a political bomb has lately exploded, a special counsel’s report on his having had classified materials in his house. He said they were all kept in a safe filing cabinet, that none were highly classified and that he didn’t share any of the information, provably false claims.
In a five-hour interview, he also told the special counsel, Robert Hur, that he could not remember when he served as vice president or when his beloved son Beau had died. Hur wrote that he was not going to file charges against Biden partly because any jury would likely let him go as he came across as “a well-meaning elderly man with a poor memory.”
Outraged by the assessment, Biden called a press conference, shouted back and forth with a big bunch of reporters and referred to the president of Egypt as the president of Mexico. This flub quickly bought to mind that, in the previous week, he had talked about conversations with two people who had been dead for years. Soon enough Democrats were discussing other possible presidential candidates.
The good news for those Democrats is that they have surrounded Trump with 91 criminal charges and that he spoke of Nikki Haley as if she were Nancy Pelosi. Another jolt? He encouraged Russia to attack those European NATO allies who don’t pay their fair share for self-defense, meaning it partly as a joke maybe but also sending a message that he did not feel wedded to an alliance overly dependent on us.
A consequence could be NATO saying goodbye and leaving us in more danger when it is really both Biden and Trump who should say goodbye.
Jay Ambrose is an op-ed columnist for Tribune News Service. Readers may email him at [email protected]. Send comments to [email protected].
