Joe Biden - President from Hell?

He's suffering from dementia. He's a puppet. He's a traitor. He's incompetent. Impeach him. 25th Amendment him. There's plenty to dislike about President Joe Biden; his fifty-years-out-of-date handsiness, his behavior toward Anita Hill during the Clarence Thomas Supreme Court hearings, his support of the Clinton era crime bill, his initial support of the invasion of Iraq, his tendency to shoot from the hip and propensity for "gaffes". Biden was far from the first choice of a lot of people during the 2020 Democratic primaries, but he prevailed over the rest of the Democratic field for several reasons. Despite the high profile of some of the more progressive-liberal candidates like Senators Sanders and Warren, the majority of Democratic voters were not supporters of the far-reaching systemic changes favored by the left wing of the party. Biden was in many ways a compromise nominee. He wasn't the favorite of a large percentage of primary voters, but he was someone the majority could live with. He was the "safe" candidate. 

Many of the labels that have been hung around Biden's neck are justified, he's been in politics for over four decades. Anyone who has been around that long is going to take unpopular stances, and some of their decisions are going to turn out to be wrong. But some of the more incendiary and insulting descriptions are nothing more than mud-slinging by political opponents. Accusations of dementia seem to be convincing to many of those who vote Republican. His sometimes disjointed speaking style is cited as evidence of his mental decline, as is his difficulty in recalling details when answering questions. We all know about his stutter. Anyone who has been around someone who has a pronounced stutter knows how difficult it can be to speak under pressure. Beyond the stutter, those who have never had to speak in public without a script, or answer questions which have complex answers, have no idea how difficult that is. Reading from a script or teleprompter is completely different than speaking off the cuff or responding to difficult questions. 

Looking back at recent presidents, Bill Clinton is one who comes to mind who appeared at ease answering questions and holding forth on government policies. Part of that is due to Clinton being extremely adept at the minutia of government. He was unusually involved in the nuts and bolts and less of a delegator than other modern presidents. He was also a consummate bullshitter. Barack Obama and Ronald Reagan seemed to be good communicators, but both men had a speaking style that communicated confidence and both were able to redirect questions and avoid specifics by spouting pre-prepared mini-speeches which didn't always answer the question. Gerald Ford and both of the Bushes came across as terrible public speakers, not because they didn't know what they were talking about, but because they lacked the debating skills and smooth delivery of Reagan, Clinton or Obama. Trump, on the other hand was great at demagogic posturing and could talk without a break for two hours, but in press conferences would resort to fabricating "facts" and outright lying when backed into a corner. Biden is more in the mold of the Bushes when it comes to his handling of questions and his ability to mentally access facts and figures. 

Of course, once his detractors grab on to the idea that Joe Biden is mentally incompetent, it's easy to jump to the next step:  that he is a puppet, controlled by Speaker Pelosi or Vice President Harris. They need no evidence for this; once they have made up their minds that he doesn't have the capacity to function intellectually, they feel that it's obvious that someone else is pulling the strings. Actual evidence points to someone who surrounds himself with experts and delegates appropriate authority to his subordinates, but who makes his own decisions. 

This brings us to a seemingly contradictory stance - that President Biden has engaged in treasonous behavior and should be impeached or should resign. Impeachment has only been used four times in our history. The first time, President Andrew Johnson avoided removal by only one vote in the Senate. Bill Clinton was never in danger of removal after his impeachment, nor was Donald Trump after his first impeachment, and he had already lost the election before his second impeachment. Richard Nixon resigned before he could be impeached and removed. Removal of a sitting president is a long shot. Not only would a majority of the House of Representatives vote to impeach him, which would likely require the other party to control the House, but two-thirds of the Senate would have to vote to convict and remove, an extremely low probability scenario.  In my opinion Donald Trump's actions more than warranted impeachment and removal, he solicited aid from a foreign government to undercut a potential (and eventual) political rival and supported and encouraged an unsuccessful coup attempt. Those were clearly corrupt acts. But even early in Trump's term there were calls for impeachment, before Trump had had the chance to do anything. There were similar calls from Republicans to do the same to Biden, days into his term. From fringe Republicans to talk show hosts, every time Biden takes an action that they don't like, or isn't successful, somebody is calling for impeachment or resignation. The Constitution doesn't list incompetence or policy disagreement as grounds for impeachment. Biden opponents act as if he is the first president who had to deal with a crisis, made decisions that went horribly wrong, or took legally shaky actions. We have Congress, we have the courts, and we have elections. 

In all likelihood, the most vocal Biden detractors are simply reacting to the resistance to the Trump presidency. They know that what they are saying is demagoguery, but they also know that it will rile up the pro-Trump and anti-Democratic masses, who don't know or understand that their leaders don't believe what's coming out of their own mouths. They also can't distinguish their own cult-like worship of Trump from what Biden's support is: an acceptance that once the primaries were over, Biden was the best option available, that we know he has faults, and that we don't like a lot of his policies, but we like enough of them to prefer them over Trumpublican hegemony.