Two-and-a-Half Years, and We're Still Awaiting That Decency and Honor the Bidens Promised to Deliver
It was a continuous promise in the media and the primary selling point of his campaign, but President Biden has only managed to shame the White House.
Following the 2020 election, there was a collective sigh felt across the media landscape. Yes, Donald Trump was contesting the results and it provided plenty of grist for the journos, but at the same time, the installation of the preferred candidate for the press was looked at with warm expectation. They coddled the doddering candidate, covered for him the numerous times he called a lid on the election trail, and essentially campaigned on his behalf.
The Joe Biden victory was then sold in the press, almost as an insistence of their favoring him, as the return of normalcy and respectability to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Class, dignity, honor, and professionalism were assured to return to the nation’s capital. Now, this summer, as we begin to peer forward to the next election, we have to acknowledge the abject failure of these promised renovations by this First Family.
Yesterday, Axios came out with a report on how the president is prone to vulgar outbursts with his staff, saying harsh things when he is not pleased with how meetings are going — itself, not a major story. Except, this is the same man who, during those early days of promised magnificence, lectured incoming staffers that he would not tolerate anyone treating others with disrespect. Yet here he is shown defying his own dictate, a man incapable of following his own commands.
Yet this is hardly a lone example. Currently, the Bidens are dealing with concurrent news items that make them appear like a dysphoric, dysfunctional lot. The recidivist First Son Hunter is grappling with a legal case of a child he sired out of wedlock, and the treatment of this by his family is bordering on disturbing. Long an issue they chose to ignore (only six stockings hung at Christmas for the grandchildren, not the accurate seven) the details from the paternity court case were jarring.
Hunter fought against support payments, crying poor after news of him banking millions off of dubious foreign money deals, to say nothing of what he recently pocketed selling his artwork. As part of the settlement, we learned that there was a demand that this child could not use the Biden family name. We also heard of the order delivered inside the White House that any reference to grandchildren could only reference there being six, omitting Navy Joan Biden.
This is a cold, calculated decision of a political nature, and it is one that defies all the claims of how this Biden unit places a priority on family above all else. We see this struggle in the New York Times, which in the span of the same article, attempted to paint the Bidens in this warm, Ohana light while also referencing Navy and struggling to give the details without upsetting that prior narrative.
His public image is centered around his devotion to his family — including to Hunter, his only surviving son. In strategy meetings in recent years, aides have been told that the Bidens have six, not seven, grandchildren, according to two people familiar with the discussions.
Biden has repeatedly demonstrated his failure to bring the dignity and honor we were all told he would usher into the West Wing. Yet now the administration is dealing with the unthinkable: There is the surreal scandal of cocaine discovered inside the White House. This is a development nobody would expect, and yet it has been even more occluded by the reactions within the Biden circles, while the press seeks ways to not report on it. (Just imagine the hyperventilating coverage this would receive were it the Trump administration.)
Instead of a serious investigation into the matter with full disclosures, we have seen this administration alter the story repeatedly, something that would be expected to raise the interest of the press. Instead, the journalists have been content with the shifting explanations, and Politico even appeared to wash its hands; it is unlikely anyone will be tagged as responsible. Well, then, the story is over.
To get a sense of where all of this leads, you get Michael Tomasky at the New Republic, moaning about the way Biden is receiving these criticisms. Mike’s contention is that because Biden is such a noble human that it is appalling that he has to endure charges of hypocrisy when these issues are raised. Unlike Trump, who seemingly “gets away with it” because he is a scumbag (Mike’s word), Biden is unfairly targeted.
What Tomasky is upset about here is the standard always used in the press for others, such as devout religious citizens. We are familiar with this trope used in the media — “They call themselves Christians, but…” and then an allegedly disqualifying example is presented. Well, Mr. Tomasky, we are employing that very method here with the president. He, and the press, have made the claim that magnificence would be brought to the White House, so why is it wrong to point out the departures from that boast?
He was said to return professionalism with the approach to the press, yet Biden has routinely treated them in a manner we have been told is a threat to freedom of the press. This more transparent administration cannot provide details via the press secretary. A recent court case saw the White House commanded to curtail speaking with social media to silence free speech. But today, holding him accountable is crossing a line. We are to hear his promises, but we don’t dare measure them.
Decency — from the man dispatching a grandchild and having recreational drugs turning up in the White House? When it comes to repairing the economy, the reactionary question has to be: “When does he plan on starting that?!” And as for uniting the nation, I think we can call this into question as well, based solely on Biden’s “Red Lecture” speech, delivered last September from Philadelphia.
In that caustic diatribe, Biden called out great swaths of the country and described them in harsh terms, accusing them of some of the harshest actions.
And here, in my view, is what is true: MAGA Republicans do not respect the Constitution. They do not believe in the rule of law. They do not recognize the will of the people.
MAGA forces are determined to take this country backwards, backwards to an America where there is no right to choose, no right to privacy, no right to contraception, no right to marry who you love. They promote authoritarian leaders, and they fanned the flames of political violence that are a threat to our personal rights, to the pursuit of justice, to the rule of law, to the very soul of this country.
Strong words from the man who routinely is countered by the Supreme Court, and who, in Missouri vs. Biden, was recently ruled to have been silencing free expression. This laundry list of examples defying the claims made in the press and by the administration basically leads to asking the same type of disqualifying question heard from journalists.
“Biden is called a decent and honorable individual, but…”
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