Joe Biden Was Never Up to the Task

J oe Biden is a tired, pallid septuagenarian whose job asks too much of him. Call it a cruel observation, if you will, but the president does not have the stuff the nation needs, especially now. Yesterday’s press conference on the deadly attacks in Kabul was many things — stilted, mechanical, obfuscatory — but more than anything else, it highlighted Joe Biden’s frailty.

In front of a press who questioned him as if they were visiting him during lunch hour at Shady Rest, President Biden appeared confused and exhausted — eventually resorting to resting his head on the binder in front of him. It was pitiful and makes the press’s job nigh impossible; how can one hold the “Leader of the Free World” to account when he can’t even hold himself up? Asking tough, insightful questions of him makes the journalist appear cruel. The public and those in harm’s way deserve leadership from Biden, whether he’s capable of it or not.

Biden was primarily elected because people liked where the United States was overall but didn’t like the guy running the place. COVID was on a downward slide, and the economy was looking muscular. Foreign threats were seemingly reduced to glaring competitions across the South China and Bering Seas. Joe was tasked with sitting in the Oval Office, signing bills, and passively lowering the political temperature. The problem with consciously hiring a dim man, though, is his diminished acuity remains in dire moments.

Americans gave the keys to the executive branch to a feeble backslapper, assuming that there was very little he would be able to screw up. Unfortunately for all involved, far too few realized the scope of his capacity for making a bad situation worse — we should have listened to Obama — and his inability to handle a trying situation with any measure of competence.

What’s worse, the Biden team is one built for domestic-policy squabbles. The construction of his cabinet is one formulated for the culture wars, with political figures in foreign-policy positions and the elevation of politically active military leadership.

When it came time for the cabinet to look outward and make tough decisions — how to depart Afghanistan, what to do with gear and ground positions, etc. — they balked and allowed outside forces to dictate the entirety of the affair, with politics in mind. In the span of a few months, the Taliban have become the rulers of Afghanistan and now act as the thin line between ISIS bombings and U.S. civilians boarding planes. Indefensible, and Biden’s stooped defeatism confirmed it.

Before anyone utters the name ‘Trump,’ let it be said that he would have made some dunderheaded moves with the Afghanistan withdrawal, and in fact made some before leaving office, but it’s hard to imagine him doing a worse job than Joe. At the very least, Trump would be upright and fully conscious in front of the cameras.

Furthermore, Biden’s claim that Trump set current events in motion is disingenuous, not because Trump was right to make such an agreement, but because Joe has been president since January. He has repeatedly shown that he has no problem breaking with his predecessor’s agreements and proclamations. His first two weeks in office were nonstop executive orders and redactions thereof.

The American electorate is not without blame. Joe’s physical and mental decline has long been evident, but he was the safe choice. We, the voters, think far too much of domestic affairs and forget the broader world to our detriment. It’s no accident that the presidential nominees were both inept in foreign policy. Americans don’t care about such policy until we see the blood of our sons and daughters. Biden’s elevation to the presidency over Trump, the latter being less abysmal in this realm, reflects our selfishness and myopic vision.

We got a binge-spending isolationist whose policies and person fail to engage with reality in war, commerce, and education. The only time Joe shows some grit — though only an ephemeral callback to his younger, virile outbursts — is when he’s making catastrophes worse, digging into indefensible positions, ironically mirroring what he asks of U.S. forces in Kabul.

His shame is our shame; let us pray that this abdication of leadership does not cost more lives than it already has.