It’s been more than two months. I’m not a convert to Biden and the Democrats, and all indications are that I’m never going to be. He is, instead, demonstrating himself to be a President whose agenda I strongly dislike. From massive spending to gun control, from putting radicals into positions of authority to trade policy to abandoning Afghanistan to pressing for worldwide tax increases and in many other areas, he’s showing himself to be what historically would be considered a strongly leftward President.
He is exactly the sort of President I have argued against for most of my life. He doesn’t even have a history of being a “nice guy”, despite the push in that regard by the favorable side of the media. He’s the guy who trashed the reputation of a Supreme Court nominee despite knowing he was peddling lies, the guy who led the charge against witnesses being allowed in the Bill Clinton impeachment hearing, and the guy who made racist jokes about Dunkin Donuts… three random samples of bad behavior, without touching on issues like the plagiarism and repeated denials thereof or various allegations from his time as Vice President.
He has one greatly laudable attribute: He’s not Trump. Against the former President, he is a superior person and leader in nearly every way. That’s a very low bar. Biden is also superior to some of the other Democrats who were available; he’s not a full-throated socialist like Bernie Sanders, nor is he demanding reparations (although at least one of his cabinet members is very open to the notion) and his Executive Orders at least have the ring of recognizing the limits of his authority. He’s not demonizing half the country, he doesn’t have a long history of palling around with people who prostitute teenagers, and the unwanted contact complaints about him are that he gave some women unrequested neck massages as opposed to the Trump allegations of underaged rape and recorded bragging about vaginal grabs.
Biden has also provided concrete success. The vaccine rollout for adults in this country has been excellent, albeit with a down side of angering some of our allies. His justice department has been prosecuting the January insurrectionists, while I strongly suspect a Trump-controlled department would have waved away the traitorous activity. I’m even hopeful that Trump may yet be prosecuted, although with every additional day without movement on charges I grow more doubtful that many politicians will be held accountable for their roles. The Democrats in D.C. are just as elitist as the Republicans, and few of them want to normalize legal accountability.
Ultimately, I’m not horrified by Biden. The efforts by the Republican media to make me so, after having them press me with lies for five years running, do nothing but produce good feelings. Irrational attacks on Hunter Biden? I find them as reprehensible as the cheap attacks I watched on the Bush twins for eight years. Unless Hunter is directly involved in the day to day operations of the Biden White House and publicity machine (as three of the Trump kids were) I really don’t care what personal issues he has. And I recognize that many of Biden’s personal failings were independent of his time as President; while they make me watch his activity now, as President he’s been making clear attempts to be unifying; his big misstep there was attacking Republican Governors for “Neanderthal thinking” (despite pushing to open schools, himself, and not saying a word as Democrat Governors opened their states). That one dig was minimal – he didn’t even call the Governors Neanderthals but attacked their decision – compared to any given six-hour period from Trump’s Twitter stream across the entire four years of his Presidency.
Trump wasn’t simply bad. He was a walking nightmare, and Biden is flourishing by comparison. He’s so much better that it encourages the argument that people should sign on with him.
That’s not the case. People need to promote policy and leadership they want, not pick from the better of two bad options. Biden is a bad option, in my view. His policy efforts are demonstrating that. He’s a normal politician, something I appreciate after four years of an autocrat, but that politician is in the vein of John Kerry or Michael Dukakis. I didn’t expect them to be Mammon and Baal, I thought they would be people making a bunch of understandable but fundamentally wrong decisions amidst the basic correct actions required to properly keep the country running. I opposed them for reasons, and from what I’ve seen of Biden, I expect to oppose him on many points as well.
