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Why does Joe Biden want to be president? (And why did Trump want to be president?) — 59 Comments

1. Considering how less than average Biden has been his entire life, it really is remarkable that he thought he could even be president.

   If China Joe was ever interviewed by a real journalist, this is a good question. He’d give a non-answer that would involve Trump.

2. Cornhead:

   Remember Ted Kennedy? See this.

   I’m going to add this as an addendum to the post.

3. That’s what I was thinking of with my comment.

   Joe is prepped for that question and his answer would be totally practiced.

   I’m thinking now that this Tara Reade thing is a DNC plant to force Biden out.

4. For the money it would bring to his nears and dears? But it seems that now Joe is beyond having a train of thought, much less any long term goals.

5. Fear.

6. IMO, the only post war Presidents who sought the job for the right reasons were Eisenhower, Reagan, and perhaps Jimmy Carter. Truman, having been thrust into the office, I’ll wager sought to retain it for the right reasons. I think puzzling out Trump will take some time.

   I’d like a different screening system for our politicians. The one we have seems to give us people who have no important skills but mounting fundraising and publicity campaigns. Trump is unusual in that he has done and could be doing other things with his life. Same deal with Ted Cruz and Rand Paul. Hillary’s legal career was (one must assume) derived from her proximity to the man who was first Attorney-General and then Governor. She did legal aid work for years because she’d been fired for cause from her congressional staff counsel job by a man who said in fourteen years of supervising attorneys in that capacity, he’d employed three for whom he would not give a reference (she being one of the three). John Edwards made good coin…as a skeevy ambulance chaser. John Kerry was a perfectly meh small practice lawyer (after a stint in the public prosecutor’s office); neither he nor his law partner built a career in private practice (she landed a judgeship). Al Gore was a newspaper reporter, an occupation he fell into after failing at one attempt at graduate school and abandoning another. Sundown Joe spent four years as an associate in a suburban firm. Bernie Sanders was a generic wage-earner (his last position was a staff job at the local historical society in Burlington). Mitch McConnell bounced around between law jobs and political staff jobs for ten years before being elected county executive at age 35. Trent Lott was an employee of the U.S. Congress w/o interruption from 1967 to 2006, after which he landed a lobbying job. We should do better.

7. Maybe Trump got fed up… he got fed up with NY gov incompetence…

8. Remember Ted Kennedy?

   People who live in the Boston media market will eat any sh!t sandwich with ‘Kennedy’ on the package label. Some of them have run elsewhere (in Maryland, in Southern California), but their performance in those loci has been unremarkable. Recall that after having been drafted by Democratic members of Congress, Ted Kennedy managed to win just 11 primaries and caucuses running against…Jimmy Carter.

   The current Kennedy scion in the Massachusetts congressional delegation seems like a somewhat competent human being, a cut above his loutish father and a cut-and-a-half above his quite hopeless cousin Patrick. It seemed like the family retainers stuffed Patrick into political office faute de mieux (by one account he had no employment history at age 27) and as soon as his father died he got out of public life. His accomplished brother had a spin in the Connecticut legislature and decided it wasn’t for him.

9. Trump won because he offered a vision of what he wanted to do for the country. He’s had that vision, evidently, for decades. Biden, it seems to me, is “next in line,” as was Hillary, and that wasn’t enough. Cornhead, his answer to the question might be totally prepped, but he’ll have to remember it.

10. Dante missed an opportunity for a really, really hot seat. Right near the fire. For Dr. Jill. The woman has no soul.

11. But now he’s the last man standing. At least for the moment.

    That’s a curious last sentence. Are you expecting another man to step in between now and the convention? Who? And how or why?

12. Montage:

    Unless you just dropped in from Mars, you should know the answer to your question. Possible replacements for Biden, either before or after the convention, have been discussed both in the MSM and the blogosphere and social media ad nauseam.

13. I believe Biden has always been corrupt, and his quest for high office is based upon the graft available with those offices.

14. Neo,
    The MSM floated the idea of Andrew Cuomo but the super delegate rules that the Democrats have would make that close to impossible. Also the DNC wouldn’t want to put someone’s name in the hat and completely ignore their own rules and therefore undermine and invalidate their own voters. Speculation in the MSM on this kind of thing is always a hot commodity but often not realistic. This is one of those cases.

    I will say, if you said ‘woman’ or ‘last person’ left standing then that would be interesting since that would include whomever his VP pick would be if Biden dropped out. Or the push for Michelle Obama.

15. Montage:

    As pointed out by Victor Davis Hanson (kryptonite warning) in the recent Uncommon Knowledge interview; which Michelle Obama are you referring to a) the angry Michelle who was only proud of America after it elected her husband or b) the softer Michelle who promoted healthy school menus for the captive kiddies of the public schools? One of these things is not like the other so to speak.

16. ScotttheBadger is on the bullseye. Biden is grifter, but unlike Slick Willy, comes across across as insincere and 5 bottles short of a six pack. Trump is a one off.

    I was a volunteer for Cruz in Iowa and Nevada. I still support Ted, but think his rightful place is on SCOTUS, preferably chief justice. I was suspicious of orangemanbad but had no reservations about voting for him. Fortunately, he has surprised me.

    I don’t want to get into a long discussion, but after two years of the age of orangemanbad, I began to see Trump as the Churchill of my lifetime. He’s eccentric, unflinching, steadfast in his vision, and unapologetic for America. He instinctively knows the value of Western Civilization and why that is a light in the darkness of humanity.

17. Montage on April 25, 2020 at 10:14 pm said:
    Neo,
    The MSM floated the idea of Andrew Cuomo but the super delegate rules that the Democrats have would make that close to impossible. Also the DNC wouldn’t want to put someone’s name in the hat and completely ignore their own rules and therefore undermine and invalidate their own voters.

    Montage, please double-check Cornhead’s second comment above.

    From even before the first Democrat presidential debate I had been telling friends that there is no way Biden makes it through to the end of the Democrat nominating convention. He was, in my opinion, just this side of full on senile dementia. In my opinion his performances since then have shown he is already there. Dr. Jill is often propping him up. So, Biden gets to the convention with the nomination sewn up, and then for health reasons drops out. All rules then go out the window, and the Democrats attempt, perhaps successfully, to draft Andrew Cuomo.

18. Replying to Montage is like explaining to your cat why you have no intention to give it a third bowl of food. That is something I ignore everyday.

19. …And Parker puts together a late-in-the-game score to win the internet!

    The Dems live by the idea that rules are made to be broken. If they wanted to follow rules, their own even, they would not have excluded the Bernie supporters from the convention in 2016.

    If they do bounce Joe for Cuomo, how will they deal with the past month’s worth of positive comments from Cuomo about Trump?

20. Ira,
    I’m more willing to believe Biden would drop out due to his age than that a woman accusing him of assault is a plant. I’m not a fan of conspiracy theories.

    Parker,
    I appreciate that you ‘ignore’ my comments by telling us you ignore them. Very clever. I’m sure your cat is grateful for the third meal you feed it each day. ; ^ )

21. Montage:

    You forget the #metoo and #believeallwomen much like the Commies were all in on the Hitler/Stalin Pact before Hitler invaded the USSR. The up side for the USSR was getting half of Poland. What a deal that proved to be!

    You all just follow orders from the Party. Keep wishing for Michelle Obama, but beware of wishes that are granted.

22. Could it be for the pension? I mean in Biden’s case.

23. Power is Biden’s aphrodisiac. His subconscious presumes that presidential power would allow him to feed more deeply upon the innocent.

    There’s a deep darkness within that he’s tried to keep hidden but that slips out when opportunity is too tempting to resist. His ‘innocent’ fondling of women and little girls is his “tell”.

24. I look at the Biden candidacy as proof that The-Guy-Whose-Turn-It-Is Syndrome doesn’t just happen to Republicans.

25. Parker:

    As far as Trump being a latter-day Churchill, he needs to learn when not to speak, which Churchill learned young. Trump is still filled with New York repartee. That works for taxi-drivers; not so much for POTUS.

    Some insight into Biden’s desire to be POTUS: a friend knew someone who was in the law firm he was recruited into out of law school. The other lawyers quickly learned he wasn’t very helpful around the office. In fact he spent a lot of time alone in an office behind a closed door “speaking in rotund tones,” according to my friend. He was even then practicing to be something bigger than he was.

26. Bryan Lovely — Somebody should say to Joe, “Remember Harold Stassen?” After so many tries, you just look the fool.

27. I look at the Biden candidacy as proof that The-Guy-Whose-Turn-It-Is Syndrome doesn’t just happen to Republicans.

    Suggest a bandwagon effect among black voters (who appear collectively to be more susceptible to that) concentrated in Southern states which also have more than their share of Bernie-skeptical white voters. Bernie lost every Southern state by lopsided margins. Recall that in 1988, George Bush the Elder had a halting start, then swept the South.

28. I believe the majority, if not all of the modern Presidents, must suffer from a level of narcissism that would be incomprehensible to most of us. On the bell curve of narcissistic disorder in the general population they must be on the very far reaches of the rightside curve, where it nearly touches the x axis. I just don’t think most of us interact with anyone with that level of narcissism in our everyday lives, so we almost don’t see it in them.

    Imagine seeing all the problems in this nation and waking up every morning with the unflinching knowledge that you, and you alone, are the U.S. citizen most suited to solve everyone of those problems. You are so certain of it that it is completely natural that thousands of people will volunteer to work to get you elected, even though most will never even get to meet you in person, let alone have a conversation with you. Secret Service personnel should gladly take a bullet to protect you. Millions of people should hang on your every word. You are simply that unique. That special. That important.

    I think this is obvious in Obama and Trump, and certainly Trump’s opponent, Hillary. But Romney, McCain, Bush’s I and II, Kerry, Gore, Bill Clinton, Bob Dole, Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Carter… Romney came off as very humble when running, but now we see his true nature. He cannot stay out of the spotlight.

    It doesn’t surprise me at all that Biden was telling people he would be President of the United States when he was 22. He’s almost certainly, clinically psychotic. A sane person would not do such a thing. A sane person would not “come out of retirement” to run at his age, with his personal situation. There is something off with these people.

29. Lyrics to Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Fortunate Son” abridged to remove repetition. I thought of this song a lot when Bush II and Al Gore were running.

    Some folks are born made to wave the flag, ooh, they’re red, white and blue. And when the band plays “Hail to the chief” they point the cannon at you. It ain’t me, it ain’t me, I ain’t no senator’s son. It ain’t me, I ain’t no fortunate one, no.

    Some folks inherit star spangled eyes they send you down to war. And when you ask them, “How much should we give?” they only answer “More!

30. Biden’s South Carolina primary win was because 55% of the Dem. voters were blacks. Clyburn’s endorsement just preceded the voting, and they heard him.

31. Imagine seeing all the problems in this nation and waking up every morning with the unflinching knowledge that you, and you alone, are the U.S. citizen most suited to solve everyone of those problems. You are so certain of it

    It wouldn’t surprise me to discover the BO did have that idea, at least on alternate Tuesdays. In re the rest of them, I tend to doubt it.

32. Lyrics to Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Fortunate Son” abridged to remove repetition. I thought of this song a lot when Bush II and Al Gore were running.

    Why? Good musicians are often worthless when they attempt social commentary, and that song was no exception. The sentiments would have been inane even if the descriptions had borne some resemblance to Bush, Gore, or their fathers. (BTW, the military service record of Gore was quite near the median of his contemporaries’ in terms of risks if not in terms of demands; Bush’s was significantly above the median).

33. Could it be for the pension? I mean in Biden’s case.

    He was a federal employee for 44 years. His pension is adequate. His family is also adept at leveraging connections, so it would be unsurprising if some of the pelf didn’t end up in his and Jill’s coffers. There are other opportunities for graft in office as well (see Dennis Hastert’s millions). Once you leave office, you can make good coin lobbying. Walter Mondale had a net worth of about $15,000 at the beginning of 1981 and about $500,000 at the beginning of 1984. His father did well in his later years, so he may have inherited family money as well.

34. “Joe Biden’s pension is based on his role as President of the Senate. Assuming he was covered under the Civil Service Retirement System for the past 43 years, his pension could amount to approximately $248,670 per year.” (Source FedSmith.com)

    And Barack Hussein vetoed a 2016 bill that would have reduced yearly presidential pension to $200,000. never mind costs of the support staff, Secret Service, armored vehicle, etc.

    The WaPo figures Biden earned $15.6 million in his first two years as ex-VP.

35. The WaPo figures Biden earned $15.6 million in his first two years as ex-VP.

    Trade associations and higher education spread this stuff around. Members of Congress figure it can pay handsomely to be tractable when you’re in office.

36. Art:

    “. . .pay to be tractable. . .”

    Tell me if I got the translation right: “you get rich being rented.”

37. I’d add one more to Art Deco’s list of Presidents who had the “right reasons” for taking the job – Gerald Ford. BTW, he also had a fairly impressive military record in WWII, 9 “battle stars” for operations on a carrier in the Pacific.

    Finally, I remember reading something that was allegedly said by Henry Kissinger; that his first meeting with Ford (after years of serving under Nixon), was the first meeting he’d attended at the White House where he didn’t wonder what the real agenda for the meeting was.

38. Art Deco,

    Regarding Bush II and Gore, Americans should be instinctively leery of any family dynasties. History is rife with nations that devolved into hereditary monarchies.

    To quote another great rock tune: “History shows again and again how nature points out the folly of men.”

39. I’d add one more to Art Deco’s list of Presidents who had the “right reasons” for taking the job – Gerald Ford.

    Nixon had personal pathologies which expressed themselves in work settings. (His family life was uninjured by these problems. He was an introvert with a short list of friends, but the friendships were solid and untroubled). One of the features of that is that meetings were commonly contrived and scripted, with some of the participants knowing the decisions had already been made and some not. Nixon was a baaad manager, and that was one expression of it. Kissinger was a practiced office politician, and his relationship with Nixon incorporated a certain amount of gamesmanship. Ford wasn’t a head case in any setting, so his dealings with him were different. Ford also didn’t have unlimited tolerance for disrespect from eggheads. When James Schlesinger gave him a professorial lecture one too many times, he was handed a letter of dismissal.

    Ford took the vice presidency even though his wife was certainly unenthusiastic about the job. Nixon wanted John Connolly for the position, but Connolly’s legal problems precluded that. There may have been something self-sacrificial about that. There were several schools of thought when he took the position. One was typified by John Dean, who tells his wife that Nixon bought himself an insurance policy because Ford was such a banal dolt no one would want him in the presidency. Ron Nessen, who had covered Ford for NBC news and was later his press secretary thought Agnew’s resignation would make Nixon’s departure more likely by accentuating for public view the Administration’s problems, and that there were no impediments to Ford’s accession. Nicholas von Hoffmann thought retrospectively that as soon as “safe, sane” Jerry Ford had replaced the caustic and unpleasant Agnew, Nixon’s days were numbered.

    That having been said, Ron Nessen reported he ran for re-election because he actually liked the daily work flow of the Presidency. Ford, unlike Reagan, wasn’t much interested in ideas and had no objects that didn’t derive from the back and forth of Capitol Hill politics. (For some puzzling reason, he put Nelson Rockefeller in the vice presidency and in charge of the domestic policy task forces at the White House). He’d been recruited to run for Congress by Arthur Vandenburg to help knock-out the isolationist element in the Michigan congressional delegation. Not a live issue in 1973. He found life in elected office more agreeable than his law practice in Grand Rapids. He was a benign figure, but I don’t see his reasons as the right reasons.

40. Regarding Bush II and Gore, Americans should be instinctively leery of any family dynasties. History is rife with nations that devolved into hereditary monarchies.

    I don’t think you’re going to find too many examples of that in historical time. The fall of the Roman Republic, perhaps.

    Gore was a dynast with respect to Tennessee politics, not national politics. That he was a legacy pol was not the problem. That he had a truncated private sector career was a problem, having entered Congress at age 28. That he had no experience in executive positions was a problem. That he proved susceptible to fad-science like ‘global warming’ was a problem. That he was corrupted by his dealings with the Clintons and later tech companies has been a problem. He’s an odd example of late-life characterological decay. Who blows up their marriage at age 62? Al and Tipper Gore, that’s who.

    As for Bush II, he wasn’t elected to public office until he was 48 years old and favored Texas state politics (something at which his father never tried his hand). If you look at the other Republicans who ran in 2000, none of them conjoined experience in business with experience as a public executive. (Steve Forbes had the one and Lamar Alexander and Elizabeth Dole had the other).

41. Ah montage my cat never gets a third daily feed. I ‘m a conservative, something you will never understand.

42. Art Deco,

    You don’t think there are many examples in historical time of a man fighting his way to power over a people and then promoting his son to the position of leader upon his death or voluntary retirement?

43. You don’t think there are many examples in historical time of a man fighting his way to power over a people and then promoting his son to the position of leader upon his death or voluntary retirement?

    Are you referring to hereditary monarchies or not?

44. Art Deco,

    Do you have a contrarian code generator on your PC that you use to input comments and churn out replies?

    How does every single hereditary monarchy/dynasty begin?

45. How does every single hereditary monarchy/dynasty begin?

    Do you fancy they replaced city councils? In historical time, they very seldom did. And you will hardly find a single example from the period since 1789 where a monarchy was constructed where republican institutions had prevailed previously. As for hereditary autocracy in notionally republican countries, that’s also unusual. In Latin America and the Caribbean, you had something along those lines in Paraguay from 1814 to 1870 (founder to shirt-tail relation to son), you had the Somozas in Nicaragua, and you had the Duvaliers in Haiti. You have the Kim Il Sung clan in North Korea. Both India and Pakistan have familial dynasties. However, the hold of the former on the prime minister’s office has been intermittent at best since 1977 and the hold of the latter intermittent throughout. There are three or four countries in Tropical Africa with this feature. This is not a common phenomenon.

46. Art Deco,

    So you’re now going to completely shift the context of the topic we were discussing? O.K., if your goal is to get me to surrender, then you win. I surrender.

    It has been extraordinarily rare in history for a male ruler to rise to power and manipulate the government so one of his sons would then lead, instituting a monarchy/empire/dynasty that lasts multiple generations and it was the fervent hope of the Founders that America would evolve to such a system. Not only should Americans NOT be leery of such an occurrence, it is their Constitutional duty to hasten its arrival.

47. So you’re now going to completely shift the context of the topic we were discussing?

    I did nothing of the kind. I asked you for examples of what you’re talking about, and it’s crickets.

    You had dynasties in medieval and Early modern Europe, but you’d be hard put to find some place where they replaced republican institutions. (An Italian city-state, perhaps). It’s also a challenge to find dynasties of usurpers tout court. Look at British history. The accession of the Hanoverian monarchs was according to succession rules encoded in statutory law. William of Orange was a usurper, displacing his father-in-law, his brother-in-law, &c, but he himself founded no dynasty. His eventual successor was a cousin of his wife’s. Henry Tudor was a usurper, but at that point he had as satisfactory a claim to the succession as anyone. Henry of Bolingbroke was a usurper, but the relatives he displaced later re-asserted their claims. William of Normandy was not a usurper, he was a conqueror.

    If you turn to France, unless I’m mistaken, you had two examples over a period of 1,300 years of a new dynasty being established through forcible seizure.

48. Art Deco’s dictionary in action again.

49. Usurpers listed but somehow they don’t matter because someone later was a more successful usurper. Who is faking it again? Back to work and to run.

50. Usurpers listed but somehow they don’t matter because someone later was a more successful usurper.

    You might try to improve your reading comprehension too.

    William of Orange founded no dynasty, Henry Tudor was about the, closest thing to a legitimate heir to the throne there was in 1485, and the disputes over the throne between 1399 and 1485 were all between competing sets of cousins who all had some claim to the throne.

    We’re rather far afield from a discussion of Bush and Gore.

51. “It has been extraordinarily rare in history for a male ruler to rise to power and manipulate the government so one of his sons would then lead,”
    I’m pretty sure very many male rulers have risen to dictator type power and tried to manipulate the gov’t so that a son would lead. Tho not so many since WW II.
    And it partly depends on whether “getting elected” top dog/ President means you have “risen to power.” Most revolutionary generals since WW II have become Presidents for Life.
    I’d say if less than 10 out of the last 100 men tried to make their sons rulers, that would be rare, but only if less than 2 out of 100 would I call the rarity “extraordinary”.

    “… instituting a monarchy/empire/dynasty that lasts multiple generations.” Singapore? N. Korea? Certainly not many, if any, since WW II, of a “democracy” being replaced by a dictator plus sons.

52. Most revolutionary generals since WW II have become Presidents for Life.

    They haven’t, and few have attempted.

    See Latin America. The most durable in office have been Stroessner of Paraguay (1954-89), Trujillo of the Dominican Republic (1930-61), Somoza pere (1936-56) of Nicaragua, Pinochet of Chile (1973-90), Carias Andino of Honduras (1932-49), Chavez of Venezuela (1999-2013), Lopez Arellano of Honduras (1963-75), Somoza fils (1967-79) of Nicaragua, Torrijos of Panama (1969-81).

    Among them, Somoza pere, Trujillo, Torrijos, and Chavez actually died in the job. Torrijos had set up a power-sharing arrangement with civilian politicians before he died. Chavez was elected in the first instance, not a ‘revolutionary General’.

    NB, Castro of Cuba and Ortega of Nicaragua were partisans, not soldiers.

53. Tom Grey,

    I was being sarcastic, stating an obvious fallacy, in hopes of ending a debate Art Deco appears to be having with himself. He now appears to be having it with you. Have fun!

54. “Partisans not soldiers” I guess true in the AD dictionary, but as a practical matter what difference did it make to their victims. What was Che, a social worker? Reading comprehension, LOL. 🙂 😉 😉

55. “Partisans not soldiers” I guess true in the AD dictionary, but as a practical matter what difference did it make to their victims.

    A partisan force is a different sort of social organism than a standing army, and takes power only in odd circumstances. This isn’t that difficult.

56. I was being sarcastic, stating an obvious fallacy, in hopes of ending a debate Art Deco

    If you don’t wish to reply, you could always… not reply.

57. And of course those partisans in the WWII, say in the USSR and in the Vosges Mountains of France after D-Day were not a standing army, but were actually fighting a standing army. They were just a unique social organism.

    And those partisans in Latin America and South America, what again was Che’s role? The AD dictionary is so useful for understanding (mis) history. Fill us in, was the Shining Path of Peru a group of partisans or a revolutionary army? What are the narco-partisans of Columbia, an antisocial organization? Do tell.

58. Art Deco:

    And if you want people to be civil to you, try being more civil to them and cutting out the gratuitous snark.

59. And if you want people to be civil to you, try being more civil to them and cutting out the gratuitous snark.

    The term ‘gratuitous snark’ doesn’t mean what you fancy it means.

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