The Cognitive Decline of American Policy
The Joe Biden of today is not the Joe Biden of just four years ago. It has been noticeable for some time the man is not firing on all cylinders. The Democrats police it publicly when people say the man is mentally in decline, but privately many of them acknowledge it even as they make it a binary choice between Biden and Trump. It is not. Unfortunately, it seems clear now that Kamala Harris was not a choice for diversity, but a choice to forestall the twenty-fifth amendment.
It is a damning indictment that most of the country would prefer an eighty-year-old in clear, visible cognitive decline to the current Vice President of the United States. Harris, notably, is accused by her own staff of being ill-prepared and unwilling to get prepared for meetings. She is not up to the job of Vice President, let alone President.
Thus it is to Ron Klain to steer the ship of state for Biden and present to Biden a limited array of options for Biden to decide — much like Biden practiced in the Senate. It is, in fact, a common behavior of senators from Biden’s generation to let the Chiefs of Staff run the shop, settle most matters, and bring to the senator only a final package of solutions that were pre-vetted and steered in particular directions. Biden does call the shots. It is just that Klain limits the options for his boss lest his boss get distracted by details or is unable to decide. Klain steers. Biden sets the direction.
The problem is that an eighty-year-old in cognitive decline is not the best person to set direction. We have a presidency incapable of a coherent world view around which strategy can be set and tactics deployed.
Now, this White House is on full display as deeply incoherent in its policy objectives. Instead of comprehensive national policies for the nation’s advance, we have factional policy making by the various factions of the Democratic Party. Chief among them is the progressive environmentalist faction, which gets prime seating because President Biden’s Chief of Staff also served as Vice President Al Gore’s Chief of Staff. He believes in inconvenient truths.
The real inconvenient truth though is that Klain has steered the ship of state into rocks.
Currently, the United States is at odds with Russia over Ukraine, but allowing Russia to help set our course against Iran, a Russian ally. We have sanctioned Russia, but exempted energy exports including the uranium Iran needs to build a nuclear weapon. We’ve allowed China an assisting role in helping Russia formulate our position on Iran.
In fact, as of now, China and Russia know more about this deal with Iran than the United States Congress or the American people do.
The Biden Administration is deeply committed to ending fossil fuels. But in so doing, they are not helping the United States become energy independent. While championing human rights, they are enriching Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Venezuela, three regimes with terrible human rights records, two of which are already Russia allies and the third, Saudi Arabia, is flirting with Russia and China.
Joe Biden will not even acknowledge the leadership of Mohammed bin Salman, the Crown Prince and de facto leader. From the Atlantic,
The Khashoggi murder fixed a view of the crown prince as brutish, thin-skinned, and psychopathic. Among those who share a dark appraisal of MBS is President Joe Biden, who has so far refused to speak with him.…The Americans also refuse to treat him as Biden’s counterpart—Biden’s peer is the king, they insist—even though the crown prince rules the country with his father’s blessing. This stings. MBS has lines open to the Chinese.
The Biden Administration wishes to advance a domestic agenda but has failed to work across the aisle, instead dogmatically pining for the end of the filibuster. The Biden Administration has chosen to let Joe Manchin be the most powerful senator by refusing to even find common ground with roughly eleven Republicans who could get him past sixty votes.
Biden’s cognitive decline has cost his Administration any vision by which to guide it. It is left not with national policy-making and vision, but with factional policy-making and vision at the hands of progressives with two competing operations — undo everything Donald Trump and eliminate the United States’ leadership role in the Western world.