Joe Biden’s foes cheer his stumble — it’s the only misstep they’ve got (Barf Alert)

On Wednesday I received my first Covid-19 jab from a National Guard medic in a giant tent outside a Walmart. A day later President Joe Biden boasted that, 58 days into his administration, “we will have met my goal of administering 100 million shots to our fellow Americans. That’s weeks ahead of schedule.”

“A dose of hope,” Biden called it. Last week 100 million Americans also got their stimulus cheques for $1,400. The Democrats were cock-a-hoop. And then — whoops — Biden lost his footing while boarding Air Force One on the way to Atlanta and the burning question became whether he was too senile to be president.

Does it matter? Democrats are betting that deeds count for more than barbs with the public, while Republicans are determined to rain on Biden’s parade at a time when he has some solid achievements to tout.

Aides blamed his mishap on a gust of wind, while opponents scoffed. The Trumpy satirical publication The Babylon Bee reported: “Vladimir Putin has challenged Joe Biden to a contest of wits, strength and cunning: a stair-ascending contest. The winner of the contest will gain control of the other country.”

This was after the Russian president professed to be insulted last week when Biden called him a “killer” — or, more accurately, when Biden replied, “Mm-hmm, I do”, when asked on television if he considered Putin to be one.

Putin slyly backed the idea that Biden was non compos mentis and offered to meet him for a smackdown debate: “I would say to him, ‘Be well. I wish him good health. I say that without any irony, without jokes.” Russian media reports openly suggested Biden has dementia. Donald Trump Jr recycled Putin’s line by tweeting: “The whole world knows we have no leadership at the top, just an empty suit with a teleprompter (and he can’t even get that right). They look at America’s weakness right now and are salivating.”

If anything confirmed the US intelligence assessment of foreign threats in the 2020 election, declassified last week, that the Trump campaign and Putin shared talking points, this was it. “Moscow’s influence actors uniformly worked to denigrate President Biden after his entrance into the race,” the report concluded.

Admittedly Biden has made plenty of gaffes. He appeared at one point to forget the name of General Lloyd Austin, his defence secretary, and referred to his vice-president, Kamala Harris, last week as “President Harris”.

This may be the result of his lifelong stutter rather than evidence of cognitive decline. Yet it was seized on as a means of denying Biden credit for a predicted economic bonanza.

Many economists are forecasting a vertical leap in growth. All that Covid-19 relief money sloshing around has led to prophecies of a consumer boom. A year ago Americans held an estimated $1.4 trillion in liquid savings. Today they have $3.9 trillion and are ready to splurge after kicking their heels at home during the pandemic.

Last week the investment bank Goldman Sachs predicted that the US economy would grow by 8 per cent this year, with unemployment set to drop from 6.5 per cent to 4 per cent. The economy should perform even better in 2022, with unemployment heading down to its 3.5 per cent pre-pandemic low — just in time for the midterm elections. The stock market has continued its bull run, even though Donald Trump used to claim this was due to his own genius at the helm.

Is there a secret sauce to Biden’s success? And can the honeymoon period last? Confining Uncle Joe to his basement worked so well before the election that his aides are not bothered about keeping him under wraps as president. Biden is in the habit of flying back to his home in Delaware at weekends (at great public expense) so, for all we know, he still spends a lot of time there.

There was fun to be had over a tweet last weekend by Ted Cruz, the Republican senator and presidential hopeful. “Three words to describe the first weeks of the Biden administration: boring but radical.”

Perfect. Put it on Biden’s epitaph. That he becomes a transformational president without anybody noticing or getting het up about it is the optimal outcome for the Democrats.

Biden used to be so garrulous, always elbowing himself to the fore of debates, that allies are wondering whether he has had a personality transplant. The 78-year-old president had “exploded that musty maxim about old dogs and new tricks”, the New York Times columnist Frank Bruni wrote. “Sure, I see the photographs and video footage of him. I know there’s a man with Biden’s name in the White House, taking meetings, reading briefing papers (how novel!) and most definitely signing legislation. That $1.9 trillion behemoth was epochal. Hail to the chief. He has a sense of urgency and big ambitions.”

The conservative Fox News presenter Sean Hannity has deduced from the same set of facts that Biden is “struggling to keep his focus. He’s digging in deep, locking in just to get through those prepared remarks. He does one of those a day and looks like he needs a nap. Truth be told, Joe had nothing to do with the $1.9 trillion payoff bill. Joe is not totally fine. Our sources say panic has set in at the White House . . . Is there something medically wrong here? We have a right to know.”

Back in the 1980s, Ronald Reagan used to laugh about his advanced age: “I have left orders to be awakened at any time in case of national emergency, even if I am in a cabinet meeting.”

His son Ron later suggested in a hotly disputed memoir that his father had exhibited early signs of Alzheimer’s in 1986, during his second term. Yet a few months later, Reagan held a summit with Mikhail Gorbachev in Reykjavik, Iceland, paving the way for the first nuclear arms reduction treaty between America and the Soviets If he was in decline, it did not seem to hamper his effectiveness.

Reagan was surrounded by statesmen: James Baker, his chief of staff and Treasury secretary, and George Schultz, his long-serving secretary of state, who died last month at the age of 100. The ship of state was in safe hands.

Biden’s aides are not in that legendary category but I have been rethinking the criticism that they are Obama-era retreads. Experience matters. Janet Yellen, the Treasury secretary, chaired the Federal Reserve until 2018 — no wonder Wall Street has confidence in the stimulus. Antony Blinken, who met Chinese diplomats in Alaska last week, was deputy secretary of state under Barack Obama. Ron Klain, the White House chief of staff, worked on Biden’s first presidential campaign in 1988 and was his vice-presidential chief of staff.

William Galston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who worked in the Clinton White House, told me: “This is a government of seasoned professionals. There aren’t a lot of people who are in the White House for the first time.”

This had not been the case when Bill Clinton took power after 12 years of Republican presidents, he added. “We were like tourists.”

Nobody is more experienced than Biden himself, particularly when it comes to Senate arm-twisting.

Meanwhile, the Biden team has “refused to be baited” on the cultural wars inflaming America, said Galston. “People are experiencing Biden as a rest after President Trump was in our faces 24 hours a day.”

Can Biden’s luck hold? That depends on several large bets — that the coronavirus won’t surge again (there are some disquieting signs) and that the economy won’t go on a tear that sends inflation soaring. The stock market is also bound to tumble, but nobody knows when. Biden can afford some senior moments as long as spring is coming.

I used to think when a human being became an adult, they knew how to figure a few things out... and if they were educated, they could do a little more with a trained brain.

I have lost all respect for... there isn’t even a name to lay on this.. because it makes all my assumptions null and void!

they are either lying or live in their made up fantasy world.. which puts them in the looney basket.

every dem and every republican who wanted Trump out ..every one who chose socialism over a President who was fixing this nation.. has no business doing ANYTHING in Washington.

do you know what common sense is..,,?

its the ability to figure out how to live day by day making right decisions and choices so to avoid calamities.

the dims and biden have NONE of the above and their backhanded back stabbing lying cheating .. without soul... are in deep trouble..

and its no surprise.. rule against right and thus is what you get.

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