That was the President of the United States, not just a grown man but the democratically elected leader of our government, in response to the question posed by George Stephanopolos last night in the interview designed to calm American fears that Joe Biden is not capable of doing his job.
How diminishing, damning, desperate and depressing.
It’s less than three minutes, but it’s plenty.
This has been called a “make or break” moment by some of the dimmer members of the media. It could be break, but there’s no way it could possibly be “make.” As my Trump-Deranged sister said, Biden doing one interview, taped, only a half-hour long, mid-day with a presumably friendly interviewer without crashing proves nothing. She wondered why anyone, including Biden’s campaign, would think it would. All the interview could do, she said, was hurt Biden. But ah, replied her sage older brother: This is for the idiots and the Biden-defending reporters and pundits (but I repeat myself). If the interview goes smoothly, they will hold it up as definitive evidence that Joe is ready to riff on everything from nuclear fission to the politics of Tierra Del Fuego.
Ryan Harkins’ Comment of the Day is not so much about the inspiring post as it is a meta analysis of the dynamic of commenting at Ethics Alarms generally. I loved the comment the second it appeared, and now seems a particularly propitious time to post it, in light of some recent threads
Here it is…
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There is something I think is missing in the dialogue between conservatives and liberals. Certainly one aspect of it is that new commenters come into the fray relatively fresh, by which I mean they haven’t (as far as I can tell) spent any time reviewing Jack’s enormous output on the blog. Before I ever dared to comment, I spent time reading through a chunk of Ethics Alarm’s history to see what Jack had already previously said on certain topics. I read the comment policy. I read through the rationalization list. And I still get blindsided every now and then by the fact that I haven’t fully imbibed what Jack has written here.
I do think just jumping into the fray and shouting “You’re wrong, here’s why!” even when there are good arguments to be made is foolhardy, because it ignores the layers and layers of nuance that have been developed on the blog over many years.
And this leads to the central observation I’m making. One way of describing how any of us looks at the world is through our biases, but biases are just one part of the entire paradigm each of us exist within. Every foundational belief, every bias, every opinion, every experience, every bit of accrued evidence builds up this paradigm. Convincing someone from a different paradigm of something that runs counter to that paradigm is difficult because it involves breaking down that entire paradigm. Sometimes that does happen; that’s why people convert from one religion to another, or stop supporting one economic model for a radically different one, or change political parties, or decide that string theory isn’t the grand unified theory it has been touted as. But in an initial engagement with someone, the likelihood of getting someone to shift his paradigm from a few simple exchanges is highly unlikely.
The <gasp!> apocalyptic news was the New York Times posting an editorial board statement telling Biden he has to go “for the good of the country.” Of course, the Times can’t be expected to accept a share of responsibility for saddling the U.S. with Biden by burying the credible account of a staffer who claimed he raped her, hiding the Hunter laptop story until the success of Joe’s basement campaign was cinched, and generally serving as an uncritical Democratic Party cheering section when it counts. The Times also let the completely discredited Lincoln Project take a typical shot at Trump in its op-ed pages. And a silly one: the Project’s mouthpiece said that Trump botched the debate because he didn’t “lay out a positive economic plan to appeal to middle-class voters feeling economic pressure” (Sure he did: get Joe Biden out of the White House! Works for me!) and reverse himself on abortion, saving “young girls” from having to “endure extremist politicians eager to criminalize what was a constitutional right for two generations.” No woman is in danger of ever being imprisoned in the U.S. for having an abortion. Dumb prosecutors will do dumb things, but that’s no reason to ignore the critical issue at the core of the abortion problem: the delicate human lives abortion enthusiasts want to ignore. In the debate, Trump focused on that. It wasn’t a mistake.
As for the Times board, it dutifully parroted the official DNC talking points about Trump’s lies and “lies,” as if Biden wasn’t spitting out whoppers himself when it was possible to figure out what he was saying. The Times also used the latest trope from the Axis: Republicans should consider replacing Trump. Sure, that makes sense. If Biden was a complete vegetable and still beating Trump in the polls, is there any chance that Democrats would replace him as their nominee? Nah, there’s no mainstream media bias!
More:
To a substantial extent, the aftermath of the oogy Presidential debate this week has been more revealing than the debate itself. Nobody who has been paying attention should have been surprised by President Biden disturbing performance. Just the fact that he was willing, or was allowed, to participate in the debate at all had me thinking that day, “Well, I guess they must have figured out some way for Joe to keep his dementia at bay for 90 minutes.” They hadn’t. Biden could have pulled out of the debate with relatively minimal damage, citing his health (he did have a cold) or something else. The blow-back and speculation would have not significantly more critical than what he received for skipping the traditional Presidential live appearance on the Super Bowl broadcast.
There is speculation that Joe was deliberately set up to fail. In the previous EA post about this debacle—and anyone who was pleased or amused by Biden’s distress needs an ethics transplant—I attributed the President being subjected to the national and international humiliation to his party’s, campaign’s and staff’s incompetence. Hanlon’s Razor still compels that verdict, but I must say some of the recent conspiracy theories sound increasingly plausible.
In this post from May 21, I harshly criticized George Mason professor Jeremy Mayer’s USA Today column headlined, “How Biden Can Save America From Trump’s Return To The White House: Drop Out of the Race.” Professor Mayer was gracious, good-natured and gutsy enough to come here to defend his position and also join the comment wars. He’s an admirable person and a thoughtful one, obviously. I just realized that I never apologized for calling him an “idiot” in my post. I still disagree strongly with his article, but he’s not an idiot, and I hereby apologize for that slur. It was unfair and wrong. I’m sorry, I regret it, and I will try to restrict my use of “idiot” in the future to genuine idiots.
But I digress. I would be fascinated to know how the events of this week have altered his position, if at all. To quote the USA Today piece: “Biden could announce, anytime this summer, that he’s out. He could use the same logic that got him the nomination in 2020. He sincerely and accurately believed that he was the Democrat with the best chance to beat Trump. Now, he is one of the few national Democrats who could get Trump reelected.”
Based on Biden’s defiant rally yesterday, I don’t see how he could reverse himself and withdraw without looking bullied and being further humiliated. One thing we know about Biden’s personality is that he is insecure, and as a lifetime over-achiever he bristles at criticism and being, in his view, underestimated. Many are evoking the model of President Lyndon Johnson, who withdrew from his re-election campaign in 1968. Johnson was more popular than Biden at the time, and he withdrew much earlier, in March. He also had a divisive and much hated Republican looming as his likely opponent, Richard Nixon. But Johnson really was, as George W. Bush claimed to be, “a uniter not a divider.” He saw his presence in the race as further dividing what was already an ominously divided country, as well as his party. Biden has actively encouraged division as President. Biden’s no Johnson.
Other points…
Is using Nelson Muntz to introduce a post about last night’s debacle for President Biden and the Democrats too mean? Too cruel? Unnecessarily harsh? I don’t think so. The alternative was one of many devastating shots from last night of dead-eyed Biden staring into space, seemingly zoned out. Nelson is fair and appropriate, because no degree of mockery, resentment or schadenfreude is excessive as a response to this corrupted and arrogant party being exposed beyond denial (though many are trying) for their unforgivable infliction of a mentally rotting, place-holding shell on this great and essential nation as its leader. I would be furious, but I was already furious about this before Biden was nominated. His physical and mental deterioration was obvious then. It was also obvious that the party and the news media were hiding it. It has been obvious the Biden is getting worse too: already unfit to be President, he was deteriorating further right in front of us—-and the Party’s response was that the evidence was all “cheap fakes.” Pure 1984 and aspiring totalitarianism, and yet the desperate Trump Deranged applauded it, excused it, and enabled it. Shame on them, shame on everybody. Well, they got what was coming to them last night. Good.
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