Biden then, Biden now
Commenter “Yawrate” writes:
But judging by what the president has said throughout his career in the senate when he was in complete control of himself he wouldn’t have bought into the wholesale destruction of our country. Which tells us that he really isn’t in charge.
Well, it depends what one means by “in charge.” He’s certainly not fully in charge, but as I’ve said before I think he’s significantly in charge of foreign policy and at least partly in charge of much of the rest. There are also plenty of advisors, both known and unknown, who have input. Their input is probably somewhat greater than in previous administrations, but not all that much greater.
But what’s more – and probably more relevant to what Yawrate wrote – although it’s true that when Biden was a senator, he “wouldn’t have bought into the wholesale destruction of our country,” that was a long time ago. The last time he was a senator was in 2008, wasn’t it? At that time, I would have said that Democratic officeholders in general “wouldn’t have bought into the wholesale destruction of our country.”
But the times they have a-changed. What happened between 2008 and now?
Why, first eight years of Obama and then four of Trump and Trump Derangement Syndrome. During the Obama administration the country “fundamentally changed” and many people grew to accept a leftward slide and a foreign policy that rewarded enemies and punished friends. In fact, to many of us on the right, the Obama administration seemed purposely destructive of our country.
And who was vice president then, going along just about every step of the way? Why, none other than a non-demented Joe Biden, that’s who.
My read on Biden is that he never had any principles save “what’s in it for Joe Biden” (and, at times, his relatives), and he was highly adaptable along the way. He was always willing to lie. He was always willing to do what was necessary, and his adaptation to the left happened during the Obama administration. He still is adaptable, even though his cognitive challenges are now greater. But his cognitive challenges were always substantial.
It is amazing and depressing – as well as dangerous – that someone like that managed to become president. But that’s the situation we’re in.
I’ll add that it seems ironic to me that whatever it was that people initially feared from a Trump presidency – chaos, stupidity, world crisis, economic crisis – has actually happened under Joe Biden and mostly as a direct result of Biden’s policies. Trump himself was quite the opposite, and his administration would have been very successful in most realms had it not been for the forces on the left (that includes the Democratic Party and the GOP NeverTrumpers) relentlessly trying to destroy him. Those same forces are mostly still trying to prop up and make excuses for his successor, Joe Biden.
neo opines, “I’ll add that it seems ironic to me that whatever it was that people initially feared from a Trump presidency – chaos, stupidity, world crisis, economic crisis – has actually *happened* under Joe Biden and mostly as a direct result of Biden’s policies.”
It goes hand-in-hand, does it not, with an observation I saw a couple of weeks ago [maybe even on this hallowed blog?], to wit, that Kamala Harris *is* what the left always feared Sarah Palin would be.
M J R:
True, except that Harris is even worse than what the left thought Palin would be.
Biden was obviously never very bright, nor especially articulate, but once upon a time, he belonged to a species now extinct (the moderate and centrist Democrat). One has only to look at old clips of Uncle Joe on the topic of forced busing, or of the folly of reparations, or of the necessity of securing the border, along with building fences and restricting illegal immigration (from 2006), in order to comprehend the chasm separating today’s senile puppet of malign and maleficent forces to the old machine-politician who was hardly worthy of office but at least not devoted to the destruction of the republic.
Biden was a liar through most of his political career. Lying about the accident that killed his wife and daughter. Obvious plagiarism in his 1988 presidential campaign. Reports of plagiarism in law school. Lying about his law school academic rank. Bullying voters at times in public appearances. In the VP debate with Ryan in 2012, Biden seemed demented. I expected Ryan to pause and ask if he was alright. His behavior in the Clarence Thomas hearings were a match to Ted Kennedy’s despicable behavior in the Bork hearing.
Dementia has not improved him.
Good news guys, none of those comments ever ‘occured’.
Is he lying or does he legit not remember saying them?
https://twitter.com/greg_price11/status/1508525310295351298
j e:
It is indeed a chasm. But it is a chasm bridged by his behavior during the Obama administration. That’s how he got from one side to the other, in full view of the American public.
Neo: You have a knack for summarizing the big picture in clear prose. Your last paragraph here is one good example of that. Also, your penultimate paragraph. It’s depressing that we have to somehow sit this out until 2024. And of course there’s no guarantee of regime change then.
I got “Laptop from Hell” by Miranda Devine out of the library.
I’m on about page 7 and already want to puke.
By the time I get to page, oh, say …, 30 I will have a rage towards the Biden family, I feel sure. I guess I’m a sensitive guy. But it really burns what they’re doing to people.
I’ve long thought that Biden was merely a figurehead. I’m slowly coming around a bit to neo’s POV regarding Biden.
“Biden was obviously never very bright, nor especially articulate” j e
I’m not so sure about that, no he’s not smart but Biden has always possessed what’s sometimes referred to as “animal cunning”. Were he as stupid as we wish he were, he’d never have lasted as long as he has or even been elected to the Senate in the first place.
Of possible interest; The Wall Street Journal Thursday, April 23, 1992 “How I Learned to Love the New World Order” Counterpoint
By Joseph R. Biden Jr.
https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fexternal-preview.redd.it%2FamhE7p8TJXaWQnpwABvO_LWF3IH6Vumu9H81JqBtDcw.png%3Fwidth%3D1200%26height%3D628.272251309%26auto%3Dwebp%26s%3Db023a964d2718d4ad0c55b8af52015edc4603cc1&f=1&nofb=1
Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr. is the least impressive person America has elected President in my lifetime. By orders of magnitude.
I came up with seven categories where folks might judge someone and wondered how the Presidents of my lifetime would have been viewed by folks who knew them outside of the Presidency; their High School or College classmates, relatives, teachers, coaches…
A) Intelligence
Kennedy, Nixon, Carter, H.W. Bush(?), Clinton, Obama
B) Leadership
Johnson, Reagan, H.W. Bush, Trump
C) Military Service
Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, H. W. Bush, W. Bush
D) Athletic Skill
Ford, Reagan, H. W. Bush, W. Bush, Obama, Trump
E) Musical Skill
Nixon, Clinton
F) Oratory Skill
Kennedy, Reagan, Clinton, Obama, Trump
G) Successful Career Outside of Politics
Nixon, Carter, Reagan, H.W. Bush(?), W. Bush(?), Trump
Maybe Biden would make the Athletic Skill list? He played football and baseball in High School and claims to have played football in College, but like many things on his resume it’s a bit of a stretch. Does he play golf? Tennis?
I don’t associate Kamala with the Press’ view of Palin. To me she seems like their depictions of Dan Quayle come to life.
But, to paraphrase Cole Porter, “Palin – Quayle, Potato – Potatoe, let’s call the whole thing off.”
I am not of the opinion that Biden’s neurological decline is that significant in his behaviors and the turns that his policies have taken, I see the aging and cognitive issues as being mostly superficial and under control, somewhat.
No, Biden has for many years had a high opinion of his foreign policy capabilities, he just hasn’t been marching to the same music as the mainstream. Recall that he opposed virtually every policy of the Reagan and GHW Bush administrations, including all of those that resulted in unwinding the Soviet Union without a catastrophic war. He was against resisting Communist and leftist dictators in Latin America, undermined the winding down of the Vietnam war, betrayed Soviet dissidents during his visits to the Soviet Union. He voted against the Gulf War following the Kuwait occupation, but for the later invasion of Iraq.
He is currently trying to disengage the US from the Middle East by empowering Iran as an adversarial force to Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the Gulf States, so they can fight it out without us. He meddled in Ukraine in ways both adverse to and supportive of the Putin regime. He opposed the operation to kill Osama bin Laden and casually tossed Afghanistan to the Chinese.
I think he is not currently flailing about due to age and cognition decline, he is instead effectively pursuing the wrong and demented policies he has always pursued. He is not to be pitied, but to be feared and resisted. I will make the case that he is an evil, amoral, willful man who is either betraying America for reasons I do not know, or simply is so mistaken and wretchedly poor of judgment that he is wrecking the prospects for American peace and security.
Every historian considers Pennsylvania-born James Buchanan the worst President in our history, and Joe Biden is from birth in the armpit of Pennsylvania, Scranton, a center of corruption. Maybe it’s coincidence. But at this rate Joe Biden may displace Buchanan on the worst ever list.
Regarding my comment at 5:41pm:
It will surprise none of the readers here that, while checking my memory, I stumbled onto more than one webpage that ranked Barack Obama in the upper tier of our “Most Musical Presidents” because he sang in public a few times.
We’ve had several multi-instrumentalists as Presidents and a few who were quite accomplished as musicians. At least one wrote a concerto. This youtube video shows the occasions were Obama sang. Personally, I think it’s great he sings in these clips. It’s fun. It’s personable. Good on him for making folks smile!
https://youtu.be/Pq2PUt6yHLs
But, except for a decent Al Green impersonation I wouldn’t call his singing particularly “musical.” If you watch the video he’s off key on “Amazing Grace” and even changes key a few times, and he’s also off key on “Sweet Home Chicago.” Aside from the Al Green impersonation (which isn’t bad!), the other clip is him rapping; in other words, speaking.
My read on Biden is that he never had any principles save “what’s in it for Joe Biden” (and, at times, his relatives), and he was highly adaptable along the way.
I read that book too. On this, his history is quite remarkable. I doubt any of us would have imagined being a US Senator at age 30, especially after getting caught plagiarizing a paper in the first year of law school.
Leland,
It’s Delaware.
I can’t find population data from the year he was elected, but in 1990 it was 666,168. I think a lot of ambitious 30 year-olds could manage that with the right amount of ambition and backing.
I think that if the check cleared, Biden would betray anyone, it anything. A truly evil man. An extreme combination of stupidity and arrogance, ( which are admittedly often found together ), with copious amounts of corruption, child sexual abuse, and nastyness.
Neo-
I think you actually have a too optimistic view of the workings of the government.
I think the Trump years demonstrated that a Presidents control is nearly non-existent. For all of the internal defiance by nominal “employees” of the executive branch. Few had any lasting consequences. And often those that were publicized were quietly reversed.
I would like to add an observation from a government job I just left voluntarily. And not in the you leave or we make you leave aspect that happens so often.
One of our supervisors was clearly not attending to their assigned duties. With some mix of inattentiveness or unconsciousness. This was not the first time it had happened so after numerous complaints, that had no effect. My co-worker decided to take video of another incident as proof.
I give you one guess as to who was punished more harshly. The inmates now run the asylum with a potent mix of bureaucracy and rules lawyering. And employees who find this a problem. Are told in no uncertain terms that leaving is your only alternative.
Put another way I’d say Joe is simply a psychopath/sociopath. He’s literally willing to do anything if he thought it would benefit him. The big problem is in his entire life every time he got caught doing any of this he got the barest slap on the wrist if anything. Take someone like that, teach him repeatedly that yes you’ll get away with it and you end up with the most corrupt person I’ve ever seen in that office. The one thing beyond that I’ve learned is this. I’ve wondered what would have happened if Nixon was a democrat. The answer is pretty obvious, the press would have stuck up for him, even Woodward and Bernstein.(Especially Woodward.)
Mthyx:
I never said, nor did I imply, that a president could change the makeup of federal agencies, or suddenly reverse the Gramscian march of the left through our institutions. That would be an absurdity.
However, Trump was very successful in many realms, particularly foreign policy and the economy, considering the short time he was in office. Also illegal immigration and a bunch of other areas in which he was able to reverse things Obama did by executive order.
The problem was that Trump wasn’t in office longer. Had he been in office 8 years, and then followed by someone like DeSantis, and on like that for quite a while, there might have been more basic and institutional changes as well. That times time and effort.
And Biden undid it all in the one year that Biden has been president. All of this is an indication of the power of the president. But that power is not all-powerful.
It is amazing and depressing – as well as dangerous – that someone like that managed to become president.
It’s a little less amazing, and much more depressing, that ‘someone like that’ had heavy and unorthodox (and likely illegal) help from a cabal of bazillionaires, the press, lefty activists, the woke corporations and of course the Democrat Party throughout the 2020 election year. So much so that Time Magazine publicly cluck-clucked the cabal’s triumph shortly after Uncle Joe had been declared the winner.
Neo-
I tend to agree that had Trump had some successes. The problem as I see it is that the bureaucracy can now openly defy those in charge. Tie it up in court for years upon years.
Then when there is a change in regime. Simply drop the issue. Look at the slew of executive orders Trump tried to change. And somehow was stopped by lower courts. And have reverted to the pre Trump norms. I think we are simply past the point where ANY executive. Has the ability to move in a direction contrary to the bureaucracies self interest.
That is part of the reason why the self-important chest thumping by government functionaries was so prevalent during the Trump years. They both cannot be punished and believe their own press.
The latest excuse for JoJo: his Irishness.
Quoted by Dana Loesch:
“Leon Panetta says on CNN that Biden’s gaffe in Europe about regime change came about because Biden is Irish, and his instinct to internalize human suffering may have overwhelmed him to the point where he was not careful about what he said. Biden needs more discipline Panetta says.”
https://twitter.com/DLoesch/status/1508577256343490565
Sure, and he’s kissed the Blarney Stone, supposed to “bestow the gift of gab on whoever kisses it.” “Doctor” Jill probably keeps him away from Irish whiskey, though.
“Leon Panetta says on CNN that Biden’s gaffe in Europe about regime change came about because Biden is Irish, and his instinct to internalize human suffering may have overwhelmed him to the point where he was not careful about what he said. Biden needs more discipline Panetta says.”
His ancestry is salted with Irish, not predominantly Irish, and he didn’t grow up in an ethnic enclave like Mayor Daley’s Bridgeport. While we’re at it, did Mayor Daley or John Kennedy have a loose tongue like his?
“The police are not here to create disorder, they’re here to preserve disorder.” – Richard J. Daley
“…managed to become president…”
Heh… wonder how THAT ever happened!
As time goes on, if we survive this onslaught of depravity in the country’s highest, once most-respected institutions, I think we’re going to have to coin a neologism: “bidenesque” i.e., “bizarre meaninglessness that must be interpreted” for the masses by our power elites to conceal sheer stupidity and/or criminal behavior”
(this to join “bidenism”, i.e., the ideology relating to “bidenesque”; and “bidenista”, i.e., a groupie who adores, cherishes and even imitates everything bidenesque…)
+ Bonus (the reading of which will earn you 25 BidenBonus points):
“More Details About Hunter Biden Tax Evasion Probe Emerge”—
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/more-details-about-hunter-biden-tax-evasion-probe-emerge
Hey look! Here’s Joe Biden expressing “moral outrage”!!
https://justthenews.com/government/white-house/biden-not-calling-putin-regime-change-expressing-moral-outrage
A classic bidenesque moment…
Important article on Liberalism—on a groundbreaking conference of liberals from America and Europe that took place in April 1947:
“When Classical Liberals Went to the Mountaintop”—
https://www.aier.org/article/when-classical-liberals-went-to-the-mountaintop/
H/T Powerline blog.
Key graf (of many):
“…Among the messages that Eucken [who had been involved in anti-Nazi resistance circles associated with the Lutheran theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer and whom Hayek described as the star of the conference] brought home to the other participants was direct confirmation of how much the Nazi state’s increasing control of the economy had contributed to the dictatorship’s grip on power—a theme central to Hayek’s Road to Serfdom….”
If someone had told me twenty years ago that Joe Biden would be elected president and then nearly stumble his way into nuclear war, I would have found the first half of that statement much less believable than the second.
The Senator from MBNA has never been the sharpest knife in the drawer. He never would have even sniffed the White House had Barack Obama not needed a party insider who was not part of the Clinton machine and not considered to be serious presidential material.
Biden benefits (benefitted?) from many peoples’ perception that Obama was competent and would have picked a competent VP. The problem is that Obama was a lot more cynical than many people understand.
That leads to another thought. Biden’s team, Blinken, Klain, etc., hitched their wagons to a guy who was not considered a great presidential prospect, even during the Obama administration and especially before. We may not even have the Democrats’ “A team” in place right now.
Two good points, Bauxite.
Over emotional dimbulb.
He never would have even sniffed the White House had Barack Obama not needed a party insider who was not part of the Clinton machine and not considered to be serious presidential material.
He didn’t need that either.
See Steve Sailer’s treatment of Obama’s golfing habit. He did not go golfing with professional peers. He did not make an effort to build relationships with members of Congress. Submit Obama’s an empty suit and inclined to surround himself with people who do not threaten his amour propre. Biden filled the bill.
That’s a malapropism, not an example of a loose tongue.
and his instinct to internalize human suffering may have overwhelmed him to the point where he was not careful about what he said. Biden needs more discipline Panetta says.”
Panetta is shameless.
“his instinct to internalize human suffering”
Another thing that highlights how really weird and disordered our political elite are is that Biden is considered to be this really compassionate and empathic person. And why is he considered that? Because he ENDLESSLY talks about how bad HE FEELS over his son, Beau, dying or his first wife and first child being killed in an auto accident in 1972.
I mean, is there anything else anyone ever references when classifying Biden as caring or kind? But repeatedly talking about YOUR pain doesn’t mean you actually feel anyone else’s. The most cold-blooded mob killer will cry when his mom or his brother dies.
Mike
I figured out Biden when he was Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee during Clarence Thomas’ confirmation hearings. It was an attempted political assassination with neither reason nor pity.
It’s Delaware.
I agree, but it also means he only had to grease a few wheels to open up the spigot of corruption that enriched his family. He’s done nothing meaningful to explain his personal family wealth.
William Graves,
Same here. That hearing disgusted me and changed me from being a Democrat voter.
The swamp.
Trump has shown us that the only possible way to drain the swamp is with veto and filibuster proof majorities. Then it’s possible to starve leviathan. Shrink the cabinet – close whole divisions and cut budgets across the board. Put staffers on unemployment benefits.
Nothing else will work.
Here’s my bitter ray of sunshine – 2024 will be the best chance we’ll ever get!
Then it’s possible to starve leviathan. Shrink the cabinet – close whole divisions and cut budgets across the board. Put staffers on unemployment benefits.
Don’t need to shrink the cabinet. The government has an ant heap of ‘independent agencies’ which should be consolidated into departments and trusteeships. Somewhat north of 25 departments and a half-dozen trusteeships supervised by 7-member boards ought to cover the whole ball of wax. Some departments might have appended commissions which would be the ultimate authority in rule-making and adjudication.
Some targets:
1. HUD. Fish out the agency responsible for regulating lead paint exposure and append it to EPA or some such. Shut the rest of the department down and terminate its programs.
2. Education: send the National Assessment of Educational Progress and the statistical services to the Labor Department, set up a regulatory agency for vendor-vendor and vendor-consumer relations, set up a resolutions authority to phase out federal financing of tertiary schooling (with ROTC and veterans’ benefits a residue), and shut the rest of the department down and terminate its programs.
3. Food and Nutrition Service (once responsible for about 2/3 of the Agriculture Department’s budget). Shut it down, terminate its programs.
4. Transportation Department: collect tolls on long-haul Interstates and distribute the proceeds to dedicated funds in each state on a per-acres-of-macadam basis. Otherwise, end all special-purpose grants distributed by this department to any and all corporate bodies, public and private. Transfer the aviation safety apparat and the like to a new ‘health and safety’ department.
5. Health and Human Services: sort its agencies into about 10 piles. Distribute nine of the piles to extant departments and new departments and shut down what’s in pile number 10. Discontinue the grant facility of all surviving agencies, especially the National Institutes of Health. No more patronage; they do their work in house. Among the programs you should terminate entirely would be TANF, LIHEAP, and miscellaneous subventions to local social service agencies.
6. National Science Foundation: fish out the polar programs office and send it to the Interior Department. Shut down everything else.
7. Environmental Protection Agency: distribute part of its regulatory authority to a new agency in a new ‘health and safety department’. Distribute another part to a new bureau in the Interior Department. Send the ‘environmental public works’ programs run by federal officials to the Interior Department. End all grant programs.
8. Energy Department: break it up. Send the statistical agencies to the Commerce Department, send the loan portfolio to a resolutions authority, end the grant facility, send the regulatory component to a stand-alone agency or to a new department, and set up the national laboratories (sans grant-making authority) as a stand-alone agency or as part of a new ‘science and technology’ department.
9. Veterans Affairs: send the cemeteries to the Interior Department. Spin off much (not all) of the brick and mortar inventory and the staff employed therein, replacing their services with vouchers and insurance programs.
10. Farm Service Agency: establish a schedule of counter-valing tariffs on agricultural products and shut this agency down.
11. Miscellaneous grant-making offices (in the Departments of the Interior, Justice, Homeland Security, Agriculture, Commerce): shut them all down.
12. Miscellaneous grant-making stand-alone agencies (e.g. the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting) – shut them all down.
On the flip-side, you could enhance the EITC to replace certain federal welfare programs and set up a general revenue sharing program to replace special-purpose grants.
@ Art Deco – I always enjoy your detailed, thoughtful suggestions for restructuring government and other institutions – I just wish there were some way to get them implemented!
@ Bauxite > “We may not even have the Democrats’ “A team” in place right now.”
I think we have several competing teams in “DC” (may not be physically in Washington, but in the upper elite circles).
Biden’s closest circle is probably not the one with real power.
@ Neo > “And Biden undid it all in the one year that Biden has been president. All of this is an indication of the power of the president.”
@ Mythx replies > “I think we are simply past the point where ANY executive. Has the ability to move in a direction contrary to the bureaucracies self interest.”
All of this is an indication of the power of the Deep State (however you want to define that term).
And the bureaucracies’ self-interest can have multiple facets: straight-forward personal gain of status or wealth or power; turf protection & empire building in their fiefdoms; and ideological agendas.
So, especially when you get the Perfect Trifecta of all three at once, what the president wants only gets done if it flows the same direction as their stream.
Eisenhower learned this the hard way, and I still remember the quote from somewhere. Peter Drucker uses it for his own purposes, but his advice is pretty good for presidents as much as anyone else.
https://meaningring.com/2017/10/13/testing-the-decision-against-results-by-peter-drucker/
The President’s General Staff needs a lot of designated tire-kickers; more to the point, he has to be able to FIRE those who don’t execute his orders.
Republicans seem to have more of a problem with this than Democrats, mostly because most bureaucrats already line up with the Democrat ideology underlying the orders, and most Dem politicians are only too happy to help with their empire building and personal gain.
@ Rufus > “It’s Delaware. I can’t find population data from the year he was elected, but in 1990 it was 666,168″
Well! There you have it!
“Democrat A team”
Talk about grade inflation …