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World shivers in the dark as Biden’s light on the hill fades

Verbal stumbles, blank stares, outbursts at reporters … the US President’s mental decline has become obvious and is sad to witness.

US President Joe Biden. Picture: AFP
US President Joe Biden. Picture: AFP

“Maybe a press conference soon, Mr President?” a journalist asked Joe Biden last week following a humiliating press briefing. “We look forward to that.”

“Me too,” Biden trailed off, after looking to his advisers for guidance then resting his head on his clasped hands and staring at the table as reporters shouted to get his attention.

In the entire time in office, the President’s minders have permitted him only one solo White House press conference.

You have to feel a bit sorry for Biden. It was human nature for a politician to want the biggest prize in the land, but his presidency risks becoming a disaster as he approaches one year in the White House – a disaster not only for him and ruling Democrats, but the rest of the world, too.

His own party is openly canvassing names to replace him in 2024, despite Biden’s stated intention to run again.

He must hope last week was the nadir of his presidency.

Inflation hit 7 per cent, a near 40-year record, after officials had repeatedly said it would be “transitory”.

Covid-19 infections soared to a new daily record of more than 1.35 million, making a mockery of the President’s repeated promise to “shut down the virus”.

The Supreme Court overruled his vaccine mandate for 84 million private sector workers, the centrepiece of his Covid-19 policy.

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Biden’s approval rating collapsed to 33 per cent in a major national poll, even lower than Donald Trump’s was at the same point in the electoral cycle.

And perhaps most damaging of all, his landmark speech on “voting rights” reform in Atlanta, designed to persuade reluctant Democrats to tear up longstanding Senate rules, was panned even by his own side as aggressive and stupid. Tulsi Gabbard, a candidate in the Democrat primaries in 2020, said the President had called his opponents “domestic enemies, traitors and racists”. Biden must envy Boris Johnson, caught up in a backyard party scandal.

CNN, a news network not known for an anti-Democrat bias, ran an article asking if the Biden presidency was “doomed”. At least the answer was “no”, offering up Ronald Reagan’s unpopularity in the early 1980s, when the US economy was being battered by stagflation as the new president slashed welfare programs.

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This offers false hope. Biden as President signed into law the biggest cash giveaway in history, showering $US1400 cheques on every American earning less than $US75,000 a year.

The jobless rate is less than 4 per cent, around half the level under Reagan, to whom the media were far less well disposed.

But it’s worse. Biden at 79 is older at the start of his presidency than Reagan was at the end.

The President gave a rousing, fluent speech on January 6, marking the anniversary of the Capitol riots. But it was an aberration.

The President’s apparent mental decline has become obvious – and sad, as anyone who has watched parents or grandparents in decline well knows. Trump and Reagan, whatever their other flaws, were models of lucidity by comparison.

Vice President Kamala Harris (R) looks on as President Joe Biden arrives to speak about the constitutional right to vote at the Atlanta University Centre Consortium in Atlanta, Georgia.
Vice President Kamala Harris (R) looks on as President Joe Biden arrives to speak about the constitutional right to vote at the Atlanta University Centre Consortium in Atlanta, Georgia.

Biden inexplicably yelled at reporters last week, a repeat of an outburst in Europe in June last year where he snapped weirdly at a reporter following a joint press conference with Vladimir Putin.

Even if Biden’s performances have been misinterpreted – only the President’s doctors know – the spectacle undermines confidence in the US, and raise questions about who is really calling the shots in the White House.

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Almost three dozen Democrat members of congress called on the President to give up the codes to launch nuclear weapons in February last year, a few weeks after Biden entered the White House. A coincidence, perhaps, but a reminder of the dangers to the rest of the world of having a president well past his prime.

For a weak president, especially in a critical election year, a confrontation with another country would be a sure-fire way to boost popularity, as every leader from Margaret Thatcher in the Falklands to George W. Bush in Iraq observed. And there are plenty of possibilities: Russia, China and North Korea, for a start.

As Adam Smith wrote centuries ago, when it comes to war the interests of the political class are often totally at odds with the bulk of the population.

Biden has been undone by the relentless demand from the far left of his party to legislate, when his mandate was simply to govern in a different style from his predecessor.

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Build Back Better, a collection of massive spending proposals across education, health, energy and aged care worth trillions of dollars, would each alone have recast the US economy.

They inevitably failed in a congress where the Democrats have a tiny majority; in fact, one that became slimmer at the 2020 election, a little realised or deliberately forgotten fact.

The President’s new light on the hill, “voting rights” reform, is a solution looking for a problem and is equally bound to fail. It’s a bizarre set of bills to die in a ditch over.

Republican states partly wound back provisions for absentee and early voting introduced in 2020 because of the pandemic. Amid all the accusations of racism it’s forgotten anyone who wants to vote can easily vote.

And in Georgia, a particular target of Democrat ire, it’s still easier to do so than in New York, New Jersey or the President’s home state of Delaware.

Biden is scheduled to give his second solo White House press conference on Wednesday. If he’s not mentally up to the job of answering questions across a broad range of subjects on the spot more than twice a year he might not be up to the job.

Three years is a long time in politics.

Read related topics:Joe Biden
Adam Creighton
Adam CreightonWashington Correspondent

Adam Creighton is an award-winning journalist with a special interest in tax and financial policy. He was a Journalist in Residence at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business in 2019. He’s written for The Economist and The Wall Street Journal from London and Washington DC, and authored book chapters on superannuation for Oxford University Press. He started his career at the Reserve Bank of Australia and the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority. He holds a Bachelor of Economics with First Class Honours from the University of New South Wales, and Master of Philosophy in Economics from Balliol College, Oxford, where he was a Commonwealth Scholar.

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Original URL: https://www.theaustralian.com.au/world/world-shivers-in-the-dark-as-bidens-light-on-the-hill-fades/news-story/8deb3dc81f61be7bfa7d395ffbe0fc0c