Joe Biden is facing a crisis of competence

The glaring example is, of course, the rapid takeover of Afghanistan by the Taliban in the wake of Biden's decision to pull American troops out of the country.

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While the crisis in Afghanistan is front and center in this reexamining of Biden's competence argument, it's far from the only data point in that conversation.

Remember back in May, Biden announced that the CDC had said vaccinated people no longer needed to wear masks indoors -- a development he described as a "great milestone?" Just two months later, however, Biden was forced to reverse himself amid a surge in cases caused by the Delta variant.

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To be clear: The rise of the Delta variant -- fueled by the still-unvaccinated and by many Republican governors refusing to follow guidance to mitigate the continued spread -- can't be laid entirely (or even mostly) at Biden's feet.

But there's no question that the dominant narrative of the late spring -- the Biden administration's competent management of a nationwide vaccine program and the retreat of the virus -- has taken a major hit.

Agree with the main CDC/Delta point but not at all with that detail.  Chris Cillizza, the reporter, is wrong that Biden's handling of the vaccine rollout "has taken a major hit." The detail that Cillizza misses is the same in both and the more damning as a result: the failure to anticipate and the glacial response.

Then there is the border. Arrests of those attempting to cross illegally at the US's southern border hit a two-decade high last month. Alejandro Mayorkas, the head of the Department of Homeland Security, admitted late last week that the US is facing a "serious challenge" at the border.

While Mayorkas blamed at least part of the crisis on the Trump administration, which, he said "dismantled our asylum system," there's also no question that the Biden administration is nowhere near where it wants or needs to be when it comes to its handling of the border crisis.

As CNN's Priscilla Alvarez wrote last week:

"The Biden administration has been caught between expressing compassion toward migrants and relying heavily on deterring those journeying to the US southern border. As a result, the border situation remains a political liability for the White House that is drawing criticism from both the left and the right."

I don't know anything about the border, I believe the quotes, but the border is not on peoples' radar. It was COVID, now it's Afghanistan. 

Given all of that, it's no surprise that Biden's poll numbers have taken a hit of late. Biden's 50% job approval at the end of last month was the lowest of his presidency -- as measured by Gallup. And that was before the disaster in Afghanistan, which is dominating national news coverage, and the full scope of the surge in Covid-19 was apparent.

I haven't checked Biden's approval numbers in forever. Maybe that's the consensus of the pollsters--but 

Cillizza goes out of his way to attribute the 50% to Gallup alone. 

Biden's promise to the American people was that his years in public life had best prepared him to avoid the chaos that defined the Trump era. But at the moment, chaos is winning over competence. And that is a major problem for Biden and his administration.

"At the moment"--which is bad enough!--but a moment before Biden was being celebrated for Part One of the infrastructure deal and the incipient Part Two.  It is one thing for Cillizza to write about a crisis of competence, as I have, also, but another thing Cillizza elides over is how exactly this competence cluster will be "a major problem for Biden." As I wrote yesterday, how exactly does this redound to the benefit of pro-COVID, pro-withdrawal Republicans' benefit? Are the American people going to choose in 2024 the "chaos" and incompetence cluster of 2016-20?  Injecting bleach? "My button's bigger than your button?" "Sure, let's go whole hog!" They might lol. With a little fine-tuning, Republicans have the message. But they have the wrong messengers to deliver it. Steve Scalise? Donald Trump? Ron DeSantis? Voters will shoot the message for the messenger. The American people have been very happy, justifiably, with President Biden throughout his presidency--until this moment. This is the darkest moment in the young presidency of this old man. And it will get yet darker. What is IMPERATIVE is that the president not increase the darkness at 3:45 today. To calm concerns, to rebut "chaos", this has to be a purposeful address. he must tell us the concrete steps he is going to take to the path out, he must project command and steadiness, admit error and be serious and sober on the path out.