NBC News released a fascinating article recently:
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/biden-white-house-adrift-rcna30121
Here we have legacy media attempting to report on Biden with a shred of honesty and impartiality, at least on the surface.
Approval ratings are worse than Trump (gasp!). Inflation is rampant. The War in Ukraine gets worse every day. The economy is heading for a recession. Supply chains are a mess. The stock market is flatlining. The pandemic is getting worse.
Biden admits he’s screwing up and trying to salvage his presidency! NBC News is ready to explain how our fearless leader is going to turn this sinking ship around!
Of course, the first thing you should be asking yourself is this:
“Is this article an honest attempt at self-reflection or an attempt to explain away Biden’s failures and improve his approval ratings?”
I would argue that its more of the former versus the latter.
Why?
The article leaves out plenty of key points, including:
Biden’s party controls the House and the Senate. If Republicans don’t want something passed, Pelosi and Schumer can still pass it anyways.
Biden is not dealing with a divided Congress with Republicans controlling the House or Senate. If Schumer and Pelosi are not passing Biden’s legislative agenda, then Biden does not have support from Congress.
Biden has favorable media coverage from 99% of the media and despite this coverage, still has horrible approval ratings.
Biden’s decisions have made problems he may have inherited from Trump worse.
Biden is not suited to be President in his current mental state.
Biden’s state of mental decline is obvious to anyone watching him speak and yet no one close to Biden can even admit this is legitimate issue.
For example, when Biden speaks, he makes mistakes and those mistakes are changes to long-standing American policies in place for good (read National Security) reasons
Biden has surrounded himself with incompetent people who do not understand how to lead a country.
Biden is promoting people based on their race/gender and not based on their competence and/or tangible accomplishments.
Biden is making Americans distrust institutions that used to have a relatively high level of trust with the public.
Crime in blue cities is through the roof and voters react viscerally to increases in crime. Biden appears to be oblivious to this very simple reality.
Democrats control blue cities where we are seeing crime. Whether Biden likes it or not, voters connect the Biden Presidency to crime in cities.
Law enforcement is in crisis mode nationwide thanks to the way Biden’s party treated George Floyd. The repercussions of this crisis are beginning to be seen in places like Uvalde and other police departments.
The Biden White House has purposely neglected short-term policies decisions which could alleviate the high price of gas impacting all Americans. They are doing this because the far-left has hijacked energy policy in the Biden Administration
The common themes of the article are that Biden inherited an epic mess from Trump; that Trump caused all the problems facing Biden; that Biden is not getting favorable press coverage and yet somehow deserves positive press; that Biden’s messaging has fallen flat and needs to be improved; that Biden needs new people to turn his ship around; and that other Democrats are not helping Biden and need to do so quickly.
Nowhere do you read that Biden is self-reflective in any meaningful way. Every problem is someone else’s fault and not the President’s fault. The Buck never seems to stop with Biden. It’s always Republican’s fault despite their minority status in Congress.
Maybe if Biden came out and said, “I want to find ways to unite this country and find common ground on crime, inflation, energy prices, and the economy. Let’s stop demonizing people, making extreme changes to existing policies, and pointing fingers at others. I am responsible for leading this country and I want to find common-sense measures to unite the country that will immediately bring down inflation and crime.”
The odds of this happening are slim to none, but during the next election cycle another politician could come along and make this case.
Fighting inflation, for example, is not a political issue. The Fed needs to be reigned in, audited, broken into regional councils, and stripped of their power to print money in such a reckless manner. Someone has to make this case to the public in an easy-to-understand way.
Moreover, taxes need to go up and government spending needs to be cut 1:1. The country needs much higher interest rates to fight inflation and probably needs a recession to absorb higher rates and tame the explosion of money supply. Again, this is a non-partisan issue.
If Biden cannot begin working on non-partisan issues, the next best scenario is Republican control of Congress which will prevent the government from doing anything which of course is oftentimes better than the government doing something and making existing problems worse.
If I had to bet, we will get divided government and lameduck Biden Presidency. Until that happens, however, we will continue seeing the Biden Presidency implode and our country unravel in real time.