Another Failed Presidency at Hand
This Sept. 11, a diminished president will preside over a diminished nation.
We are a country that could not keep a demagogue from the White House; could not stop an insurrectionist mob from storming the Capitol; could not win (or at least avoid losing) a war against a morally and technologically retrograde enemy; cannot conquer a disease for which there are safe and effective vaccines...
"Strumming my pain with his fingers, killing me softly with his words".
A civilization “is born stoic and dies epicurean,” wrote historian Will Durant about the Babylonians. Our civilization was born optimistic and enlightened, at least by the standards of the day. Now it feels as if it’s fading into paranoid senility.
I had never heard that by Durant before! History says it's so true. And I have written so, so frequently that optimism was so big a part of the American soul. And it got changed. On four days from now twenty years ago.
We were never "enlightened." My God. Just no. We deplored "enlightenment," devalued an education, dismissed our early authors as "people who write". As opposed to people who make stuff.
"Fading": Yes. "Paranoia": As with "born enlightened", dude, if it wasn't for our enlightened forefathers paranoia we never would have been born.
"Senility": Biden's mental acuity is legitimately in question.
Joe Biden was supposed to be the man of the hour: a calming presence exuding decency, moderation and trust. As a candidate, he sold himself as a transitional president, a fatherly figure in the mold of George H.W. Bush who would restore dignity and prudence to the Oval Office after the mendacity and chaos that came before. It’s why I voted for him, as did so many others who once tipped red.
You know, Papi Bush, he of the tangled tongue, of sock-pricing and watch-checking--he was a one-term president was Papi!
Instead, Biden has become the emblem of the hour: headstrong but shaky, ambitious but inept. He seems to be the last person in America to realize that, whatever the theoretical merits of the decision to withdraw our remaining troops from Afghanistan, the military and intelligence assumptions on which it was built were deeply flawed, the manner in which it was executed was a national humiliation and a moral betrayal, and the timing was catastrophic.
No, it was not a national humiliation. It was incompetent which is shame enough.
...
Now Biden proposes to follow this up with his $3.5 trillion budget reconciliation bill, which The Times’s Jonathan Weisman describes as “the most significant expansion of the nation’s safety net since the war on poverty in the 1960s.”
When Lyndon Johnson launched his war on poverty, its associated legislation — from food stamps to Medicare — passed with bipartisan majorities in a lopsidedly Democratic Congress. Biden has similar ambitions without the same political means. This is not going to turn out well.
Last week, Joe Manchin, Democrat from West Virginia, published an essay in The Wall Street Journal in which he said, “I, for one, won’t support a $3.5 trillion bill, or anywhere near that level of additional spending, without greater clarity about why Congress chooses to ignore the serious effects inflation and debt have on existing government programs.”
Is the White House paying any more attention to Manchin’s message than it did to classified intelligence briefs over the summer warning of the prospect of a swift Taliban victory?
I ignore Manchin and I hope the White House does too. I hope that the White House does not ignore inflation. There is a companion piece in the Times at the same time that Stephens' column was printed, "Inflation is surging across economies worldwide. That may be a good sign that the price gains are temporary." No, that is not a fucking good sign.
A good, however painful, point. No, I do not think POJO does.
Republican floodgates would open if Biden and Trump both decline to run. Trump has eclipsed all other dim lights in the Republican Party so it's difficult to pick out one. If not Trump, who? Ron DeSantis?
Right? Kamala Harris would DESTROY Ron DeSantis.
Perhaps what will save the Democrats is that Biden’s weakness will tempt Donald Trump to seek (and almost certainly gain) the Republican nomination. But then there’s the chance he’d win the election.
I do anything I can with my mean power to "tempt" the Orange Orangutan Run Trump Run! I don't think...Well, as Stephens phrases it, of course "there's a chance" Trump would beat Biden. There's a chance I would be elected by unsolicited write-ins, too. There is always a chance, anything is "possible," but Stephens does not adequately appreciate the "Trump Effect." Nobody in my political lifetime has come close to motivating a party like Trump does Demos. Trump is the sole reason we have the Senate. Democrats will not turn out in 2022 as they did in 2020 because, it's a by election yes, because we have a Demo in the White House, yes, but because Trump is not on the ballot, too! I so hope, were I religious, I would fervently pray, that he announces a run in 2024 soon, like NOW!, time's a wastin! If Trump announces ahead of the 2022 elections he will become the issue and Demos will gain, not lose seats. And whenever he announces, he--and his Grand Old Phalangist party too!-- will be unrecognizable road-kill, a bloody smear in the general election.
There’s a way back from this cliff’s edge. It begins with Biden finding a way to acknowledge publicly the gravity of his administration’s blunders. The most shameful aspect of the Afghanistan withdrawal was the incompetence of the State Department... Accountability could start with Antony Blinken’s resignation.
I have at times thought that Blinken should resign. And Austin too. And the head of the CIA and DNI. And the head of CDC to boot. The list is so long it would be like a football coach firing the players. As Woody Allen said when rejecting suicide for all the mercy-kills of devastated family he would have to commit, "It would be a massacre." I think, however, that Stephens is falling into the trap of foreign-policy-disasters-make-political-disasters. They almost never do. Hell, it's more likely Afghanistan will be forgotten than that voters are making a list and checking it twice. Afghanistan is already old news and you're not going to move a purple or blue voter to become a red voter by incompetently ending a war all colors agreed should end.
I want to say this before the thought passes. I have lost considerable interest in the three major pieces of legislation Biden is pushing, infrastructure, the reconciliation, and, my God, the most important of all, voting rights protections to counter Republican proaction to rig the 2022 and 2024 elections. I have lost interest and not followed as I did early this year because I am no longer optimistic of Biden. I have lost faith in him. It's the incompetence thing. The administration's failure to anticipate Delta and the Taliban has got both Joe's tits in ringers. Add to that his Iraqi Information Minister counter-reality show and indeed "The last few months have told us something worrying about this president" as Stephens says below.
The president might also seize the “strategic pause” Manchin has proposed and push House Democrats to pass the $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill without holding it hostage to the $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill. Infrastructure is far more popular with middle-of-the-road voters than the Great Society reprise...
My sense is that Biden will do neither. The last few months have told us something worrying about this president: He’s proud, inflexible, and thinks he’s much smarter than he really is. That’s bad news for the administration. It’s worse news for a country that desperately needs to avoid another failed presidency.
I realize I'm picking nits, I agree with 90% of what Bret writes: "Proud"? Stubborn, ossified, I would go for.
Josh Hawley? I don't think so. Ben Sasse? He would have potential to win. Marco Rubio? Maybe.
There’s a way back from this cliff’s edge. It begins with Biden finding a way to acknowledge publicly the gravity of his administration’s blunders. The most shameful aspect of the Afghanistan withdrawal was the incompetence of the State Department... Accountability could start with Antony Blinken’s resignation.
I have at times thought that Blinken should resign. And Austin too. And the head of the CIA and DNI. And the head of CDC to boot. The list is so long it would be like a football coach firing the players. As Woody Allen said when rejecting suicide for all the mercy-kills of devastated family he would have to commit, "It would be a massacre." I think, however, that Stephens is falling into the trap of foreign-policy-disasters-make-political-disasters. They almost never do. Hell, it's more likely Afghanistan will be forgotten than that voters are making a list and checking it twice. Afghanistan is already old news and you're not going to move a purple or blue voter to become a red voter by incompetently ending a war all colors agreed should end.
I want to say this before the thought passes. I have lost considerable interest in the three major pieces of legislation Biden is pushing, infrastructure, the reconciliation, and, my God, the most important of all, voting rights protections to counter Republican proaction to rig the 2022 and 2024 elections. I have lost interest and not followed as I did early this year because I am no longer optimistic of Biden. I have lost faith in him. It's the incompetence thing. The administration's failure to anticipate Delta and the Taliban has got both Joe's tits in ringers. Add to that his Iraqi Information Minister counter-reality show and indeed "The last few months have told us something worrying about this president" as Stephens says below.
The president might also seize the “strategic pause” Manchin has proposed and push House Democrats to pass the $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill without holding it hostage to the $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill. Infrastructure is far more popular with middle-of-the-road voters than the Great Society reprise...
My sense is that Biden will do neither. The last few months have told us something worrying about this president: He’s proud, inflexible, and thinks he’s much smarter than he really is. That’s bad news for the administration. It’s worse news for a country that desperately needs to avoid another failed presidency.
I realize I'm picking nits, I agree with 90% of what Bret writes: "Proud"? Stubborn, ossified, I would go for.
