Crisis of competence facing Joe Biden
By: MSN
Pretty good summary by CNN
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
At the heart of Joe Biden's 2020 presidential campaign was a single word: competence.
© Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images US President Joe Biden speaks about Covid vaccinations in the East Room of the White House in Washington, DC, July 29, 2021. (Photo by SAUL LOEB / AFP) (Photo by SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images)
After four years of Donald Trump's incompetence in, well, everything, the Biden argument was that the country badly needed a steady hand on the tiller -- someone who had been there and done that. Someone who didn't need training to do the job. Someone who was exactly the opposite of the guy currently in office.
And it worked. Rather than see Biden's age -- he's 78 -- as a negative, plenty of voters believed his decades of experience were what the country needed in the post-Trump era. Knowing how the federal bureaucracy worked mattered. So did having good relationships with world leaders. And having seen everything there was to see on both the domestic and foreign policy fronts.
Seven months into his first term, however, Biden is faced with nothing short of a crisis of that competence, beset on a number of fronts with developments that it appears all of his experience and know-how didn't prevent.
The glaring example is, of course, the rapid takeover of Afghanistan by the Taliban in the wake of Biden's decision to pull American troops out of the country.
In announcing the end of the American military commitment in Afghanistan just over a month ago, Biden had proclaimed that "there's going to be no circumstance where you see people being lifted off the roof of an embassy of the United States in Afghanistan."
Except that over the weekend, images were beamed back to the United States of helicopters airlifting people from the parking lot of the US Embassy in Kabul. And on Monday morning came even more devastating images: Afghans clinging to an American plane as it took off from the country.
The overwhelming message? The situation was totally and completely out of control -- and neither Biden nor his top foreign policy advisers could stop it.
While the crisis in Afghanistan is front and center in this reexamining of Biden's competence argument, it's far from the only data point in that conversation.
Remember back in May, Biden announced that the CDC had said vaccinated people no longer needed to wear masks indoors -- a development he described as a "great milestone?" Just two months later, however, Biden was forced to reverse himself amid a surge in cases caused by the Delta variant.
And while Biden was congratulating himself and the country this spring on the number of people who had been vaccinated against Covid-19, his administration came up short of its oft-stated goal of 70% of eligible adults with at least one shot of the vaccine by July 4.
To be clear: The rise of the Delta variant -- fueled by the still-unvaccinated and by many Republican governors refusing to follow guidance to mitigate the continued spread -- can't be laid entirely (or even mostly) at Biden's feet.
But there's no question that the dominant narrative of the late spring -- the Biden administration's competent management of a nationwide vaccine program and the retreat of the virus -- has taken a major hit.
Then there is the border. Arrests of those attempting to cross illegally at the US's southern border hit a two-decade high last month. Alejandro Mayorkas, the head of the Department of Homeland Security, admitted late last week that the US is facing a "serious challenge" at the border.
While Mayorkas blamed at least part of the crisis on the Trump administration, which, he said "dismantled our asylum system," there's also no question that the Biden administration is nowhere near where it wants or needs to be when it comes to its handling of the border crisis.
As CNN's Priscilla Alvarez wrote last week:
"The Biden administration has been caught between expressing compassion toward migrants and relying heavily on deterring those journeying to the US southern border. As a result, the border situation remains a political liability for the White House that is drawing criticism from both the left and the right."
Given all of that, it's no surprise that Biden's poll numbers have taken a hit of late. Biden's 50% job approval at the end of last month was the lowest of his presidency -- as measured by Gallup. And that was before the disaster in Afghanistan, which is dominating national news coverage, and the full scope of the surge in Covid-19 was apparent.
Biden's promise to the American people was that his years in public life had best prepared him to avoid the chaos that defined the Trump era. But at the moment, chaos is winning over competence. And that is a major problem for Biden and his administration.
Smart people saw this coming. The rest voted for Mr. Biden.
As Barack Obama said, never underestimate Biden’s ability to fuck things up.
These paragraphs are ridiculous. The spread of the virus , an unforeseen variant no less, was exacerbated by Trump cultists not getting the vaccine. Biden does not control the spread of the virus, he reacts to it.
Fauci is happy with what Biden has done, as much as he was unhappy with what Trump did. That is all you need to know.
And therein lies the damn problem. Biden reacts. He didn't stop the Delta variant from entering this country. Funny how the timing of that, and the spike of Covid cases, directly coincides with the massive surge of illegals across our southern border. But don't let facts get in the way of a massive blame deflection.
Funny how Trump was blamed for Democratic governor fuck ups of putting people that tested positive for Covid 19 into retirement and nursing homes that couldn't deal with them. They are still trying to figure out the total amount killed by those actions. But the infection and death tally was blamed directly on Trump.
Fauci is a fucking paid fool that will say anything to stay relevant and cover his own ass. He didn't earn the nickname "Flip flop Fauci" for his direct messaging and competence. Also, site where Fauci was unhappy with what Trump did? Trump was following Fauci's advise most of the time.
You (collectively) elected the biggest fuck up ever to be President. It isn't even close. Biden will go down as the worst president ever. Three more years before we can shit can his administration. That is far too long to wait.
First of all Donald Trump was impeached twice, for cause. He lied to the American people thousands of times , tried to bribe the president of a foreign nation into helping him dig up dirt on an election opponent and incited a riot that threatened the national legislature. He also misled the American people about the seriousness of the coronavirus. There is a smoking gun audio recording of Trump admitting he knew the virus was more serious than what he was telling the American people.
It is a tragedy that the Trump cult destroyed the judgement of so many Americans.
The variant is from India, not South America and it actually arrived here in Dec, 2020. Biden was not in power then, and it had nothing to do with what is going on at the border.
The rest of your comment is an opinion.
You're talking about the unforeseen Delta variant...that arose before the vaccine was available...in another country? The one that is putting vaccinated and unvaccinated people in the hospital. Are we ignoring the fact that infected people are crossing the border? Are we ignoring the fact that the people crossing our border are refusing to get vaccinated in large numbers? Are we also ignoring the fact that the delta variant is infecting the vaccinated, and that the CDC is now admitting that the vaccinated can and do spread this shit?
Fauci approval? Fauci also approves of the CDC's decision to not track breakthrough cases. (makes sense only if you don't want to know the truth) Fauci approves of the reporting methods, e.g., stating the number of breakthrough cases (that are admittedly under reported) as a percentage of the total vaccinated population, touting the vaccine's efficacy, when the same percentages result if you state the number of unvaccinated cases as a percentage of the unvaccinated population. He ignores facts like roughly 34% of the deaths in Massachusetts, in the past 30 days, were among vaccinated people. Be interesting to see Massachusetts' updated info. They added to the death count, but were silent on the number of those that were vaccinated. This has been nothing more than a bunch of "two legs bad, four legs good" bullshit, and on a level as I've never before seen.
I'm not Trump cultist by any stretch, but I'll be damned if I buy the bullshit without at least questioning it. If the vaccine is so effective in not only preventing infection, but also serious illness, I'd expect to see less than 34% of deaths coming from the crowd that took the vaccine.
Even Leon Panetta is calling this Biden debacle out for what it is.
I'll happily note it is a total disaster of unprecedented proportions. I never in all my dreams believed that there was anyone that could possibly make Jimmy Carter look like a political genius.
The problem is who is next in line
Equally incompetent if not more so. And I shiver in dread and absolute fear when the third in line is considered.