Let the President Kneecap Himself, Please

Call me old-fashioned, but I abhor administration grubs, public officials, and media figures who immediately backtrack a president’s comments. Almost as soon as the man is done speaking, the press and officials dive on the mic to undo what he said. If the man truly messed up or misspoke, let him correct the record, not some vice undersecretary of the posterior. We hired him for the job, not this unelected coterie of natterers who come in to rearrange everything that comes out of his mouth. 

Biden said a good and proper thing on 60 Minutes, that the pandemic is over. Hurrah! Thank you for joining the rest of the country in your assessment, Mr. President. Glad to have you alongside.

But within hours of the show’s airing, pundits and public-health officials, such as the White House’s top Covid-19 adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci, were writing and reckoning that the U.S. is not out of the pandemic. They point to the daily Covid death averages, which  have held at 400 over a prolonged period, and worry that the broad powers they enjoyed because of emergency measures would now be endangered. As Charlie has pointed out so capably, a host of Biden policies can survive only atop the rickety scaffolding of Covid emergency powers, something that this administration appears not to have given due consideration. 

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre appeared on MSNBC to massage the president’s words into the category of innocuous observation instead of a statement on policy. 

What Biden said was as coherent as he’s ever been, and to pretend that he just looked around and thought to himself, “Ah, it would appear the pandemic is ended, I shall announce it this very moment” is asinine. Democrats need the pandemic to be over to memory-hole their poor management of it as much as they like the power it granted them. To act as though Biden didn’t have an interest in saying what he did when he did is absurd.

The administration repeated this tactic with Biden’s Taiwan comments from the very same 60 Minutes interview — walking back his assertion that we would defend the island nation militarily if China were to invade. Within a short period, the administration had scooped those words out of the air and rearranged them to say nothing of the sort.

The Trump administration was similarly guilty of rolling corrections and sudden policy shifts, often in the wake of the president’s changing his mind on a whim. Morning briefings would be incorrect by lunch, and the agency heads would have to give their conflicting interpretations of the president’s meaning to the press. 

Now, I’m not saying an administration can’t change its mind from time to time. But its core beliefs should not be in constant flux. We’ve now had successive presidencies of policy vacillation and inconstancy that present daily challenges for many Americans. 

The Scott Walkers and Ron DeSantises of the world may enact policies some dislike, but to the (former and present) governors’ credit, they’ll go out and say why they’re doing what they’re doing and you can bet they’ll stand by the decision. Americans need to know the rules by which they live. Propping up bad presidents with intent-whisperers allows for mediocrity to stumble along.

As conservatives, we love the status quo because it is known. Certainty allows us to plan for the future, invest in what we expect to have in five years, and live our lives without an ear to the village’s augur as he divines the president’s intent from sheep intestines. We ask for little. 

Just tell us, Mr. President, what you mean to do and what you think, and we will judge it as worthy or not at the ballot box.