President Biden, Failing to Fill His Office?

President Joe Biden delivers remarks on the situation in Afghanistan, Monday, August 16, 2021 in the East Room of the White House. (Official White House Photo by Adam Schultz)

President Joe Biden enjoys touting his own good news. But, as the Spectator.World wonders, who is he convincing?

Presidential Swagger:

• the fastest rate of job creation and the lowest unemployment rate in American history
• credit for the rise of the Dow Jones index
• the rollout of the vaccine and the revival of the economy

A Deaf, Bungling Administration

Then why, continues the Spectator, can’t Biden carry his own party in the Senate, let alone public opinion?

Normality, the magic that this president was supposed to bring, has not been restored. There is nothing normal, let alone acceptable, about an administration that is both deaf to the voters’ needs and unable to contrive an alternative fix. This administration is exquisitely sensitive on cosmic issues like the future of the planet — so sensitive that it has chosen to undo the US’s energy independence without creating a serious alternative — yet it is resolutely tin-eared about the everyday basics such as the prices of gasoline and beef or the notion, radical in some quarters, that education should be conducted in person.

No wonder the public doesn’t share in the president’s joy.

What’s That “Stupid Son of a Bitch” Asking?

In the last weeks of 2021, when the administration was queried about supply-chain problems, price rises and the signs of a coming rise in the rate of inflation, the first official response was that the supplies in question were luxury goods, there was no inflation and the Peloton classes should shut up. In late January, by which time the Federal Reserve had all but confirmed that it would raise interest rates in March,

President Biden responded to a question about inflation from Fox News’s Peter Doocy by ruminating over an open mic that Doocy was a “stupid son of a bitch” for asking.

Biden’s Venomous Vapors

We would be lying, dog-faced pony soldiers if we did not allow that President Biden is a blunt speaker, and that President Trump frequently coarsened the tone. But Trump seems to have been aware of his effusions of hot and sour air; they often seemed like strategic releases, rather than the accidental discharges of venomous vapors from an addled inner monologue. We admit that putting a man with the expression of a cow that has just received a bolt from a stun gun onto the podium is a bold, if risky, strategy for restoring a sense of spontaneity to the sleepy, staged simulacrum of democratic debate that is the White House press conference. And we cherish the moments of mumbling malapropism and downright comedy that ensue.

Painful for America to Watch

But, like the hospital patient asked how he feels after the operation, it only hurts when we laugh. The president of the United States is failing to fill the office, and it is painful to see.