Why Biden is hiding

Have you seen the new variation on the children’s book series Where’s Waldo? It’s called Where’s Joe? and it is taking DC by storm. So where is Joe, leader of the free world, black-belt in political glossolalia, a potentate without power, our version of Nietzsche’s ‘Last Man’ who not only blinks but gibbers.

When I was a child, some scalpel-happy doctor determined that I should have my tonsils removed. In order to reconcile me to the procedure, I was promised all the ice-cream I could eat. That turned out to be a lie, of course, and I somehow suspect that poor Joe Biden feels the same now. Here he is, after decades of feeding at the public trough, and he is trough master supreme. It was supposed to be all ice-cream and young girls’ heads of hair. Instead, it is Afghanistan, the biggest national humiliation since the Fall of Saigon, if not, indeed, in the history of the Republic. It is a gigantic humanitarian and national security nightmare on our Southern border. It is ‘Seven Days in May’ generals and a pandemic that won’t quit. It is tanking poll numbers. And of course it is college football games across the country at which the bipartisan chant is ‘F— Joe Biden’.

No wonder Joe is harder to find these days than Waldo. A look at his briefing schedule shows that his schedule is as empty as his head. Here’s Tuesday September 28, in toto:

’10:30 AM          THE PRESIDENT receives the President’s Daily Brief

                               Closed Press

’12:30 PM          Press Briefing by White House COVID-19 Response Team and public health officials

‘1:30 PM            Press Briefing by Press Secretary Jen Psaki’

Make that a triple scoop, chocolate fudge with rainbow sprinkles.

Meanwhile, someone continues to issue mendacious tweets in the President’s name. Item:

‘My Build Back Better Agenda costs zero dollars. 

‘Instead of wasting money on tax breaks, loopholes, and tax evasion for big corporations and the wealthy, we can make a once-in-a-generation investment in working America.

‘And it adds zero dollars to the national debt.’

How do you spell out ‘three and a half trillion dollars’, the amount of money that Joe Biden wants us to spend on ‘infrastructure’?

Friedrich Nietzsche not only came up with memorable fables like his story of ‘the Last Man’ in Also Sprach Zarathustra. He also coined a number of mots that were longer on memorableness than veracity. ‘That which does not kill me makes me stronger’ is one such. It’s possible that Joe Biden will manage to kill off what remains of America as a freedom-loving, prosperous Constitutional Republic. More likely, his senescent, socialistically tinged incompetence will leave us exhausted and querulous, much like Joe himself.

I occasional take some comfort from the thought that the United States must be awfully strong to weather the feeble onslaught of this Mr Magoo. But then I think of Eliot’s famous line about the world ending not with a bang but a whimper and that feeling of consolation vanishes.