Biden Still Hasn’t Figured Out How to Read the Room
If he had, he’d know this is no time to pass trillions in new spending.
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If you’ve spent any time in Washington, you’ve heard stories about Joe Biden’s loquaciousness. Asked to give brief remarks, he’d famously meander for 30, 40, or more minutes about whatever came into his mind.
But his verbosity is a symptom of his larger problem: a lack of situational awareness. After all, this is the guy who once asked a man in a wheelchair to stand up and take a bow.
My favorite example came just after the 9/11 attacks, when Biden met with his Senate committee staffers and went into a “stream-of-consciousness monologue” about how to respond. “I’m groping here,” he confessed after a while, and then had a eureka moment. To assure the Arab world the U.S. “wasn’t bent on its destruction,” Michael Crowley reported in the New Republic, Biden declared: “Seems to me this would be a good time to send, no strings attached, a check for $200 million to Iran.”
According to Crowley, Biden “surveys the table with raised eyebrows, a How do ya like that? look on his face.” Staffers eventually broke the perplexed silence, offering a number of objections. It didn’t matter: “Joe Biden is barely listening anymore. He’s already moved on to something else.”
Two decades later, his White House staff reportedly lives in a constant state of anxiety about the boss’s inability to police his own words, and White House press secretary Jen Psaki has admitted that they try to keep him from taking too many questions.
Biden himself has acknowledged the problem, but he believes it gives him an air of authenticity. And he probably has a point.
But it’s his inability to read the room, not his long-windedness, that is the source of his political problems. His explanations of his handling of the withdrawal from Afghanistan were often poorly matched to the moment, sounding defensive or defiant when remorsefulness or humility were called for. Sometimes, it’s not his fault. He declared victory of sorts over the pandemic, right as the Delta variant threw everyone for a loop.
The best example of his misreading of the moment, however, is his entire domestic agenda, or at least the chunk of it that falls under the rubric of infrastructure.
Biden came into office with arguably the narrowest majority in Congress in history: a 50-50 Senate with very small margin in the House. And yet, he let people convince him that the moment was ripe for a “transformative” agenda, one that would rival the New Deal. He misinterpreted the passage of his $1.9-trillion COVID relief package—on the heels of trillions of additional spending under the Trump administration—as a green light for vastly more spending. Adjusted for inflation, New Deal spending was a little less than $1 trillion in today’s dollars. He’s proposing, at minimum, several New Deals in spending.
Put aside the fact there is scant evidence the country is yearning for a new New Deal. Disregard that our national debt is about 125 percent of gross domestic product. Biden, with a half-century of political experience under his belt, can’t count votes. FDR and LBJ had huge majorities to work with for their major accomplishments. Even Obamacare would have been impossible in today’s Congress.
Of course, a major driver of Biden’s predicament is that the base of the Democratic Party can’t read the room either. But they don’t care.
Biden, however, is the president. He’s the one who insisted on the campaign trail that “to lead America, you have to understand America,” and he touted his mastery of how Washington works.
Historically, presidents adjust to reality. They choose sides in intraparty debates. Bill Clinton had a miserable first two years, but that guy knew how to read a room. After the 1994 midterms, he tacked to the center, declared “the era of big government is over,” and cruised to reelection. Biden may still get something that passes for a victory, but even if he does, odds are Republicans will be well-positioned to take back Congress in 2022.
In June, on the heels of his COVID relief package, Biden brokered a bipartisan infrastructure deal with the Senate, garnering support from 19 Republicans. It was the highwater mark of Biden’s presidency, fulfilling his vow to be a competent president who gets things done. But before the bipartisan backslapping subsided, he misread the room again, announcing that he wouldn’t sign that deal unless the Senate also passed another $3.5 trillion in “human infrastructure.” It’s no coincidence his approval ratings have been sliding ever since.
Biden is well on in his age related cognitive decline. Those of us with experience dealing with older relatives recognize the signs of age-related dementia.
The problem here is that Joe Biden has never been the sharpest tack in the shed. He has a history of rambling and gaffe. However, he was certainly gifted to some degree for reading the political climate to his political advantage and formulating his messaging to always keep him in favored neutral territory. Because of this he has a history of flips and flops... no real principled stand on anything. This is how he tricked so many in supporting him... he believes in nothing, so he is not a media and political target for believing anything that can be criticized because clearly he will just change his mind to what benefits him and his supporters politically. He is really "hiden Biden" in that he could also just hide behind the decisions of others... claiming he was never really part of that policy move... or if he was, just shape-shift to a different position and claim he was just subordinate to the forces outside his control.
But that does not work too well at the executive level. He is still trying to hide but there is nobody else to hide behind. He keeps trying to position the cardboard cutout of Trump to shield him from responsibility. And the corporate media also helps put up distractions. But the emperor wears no clothes and it is becoming more clear to voters that Biden is in WAY over his head even if not in full mental decline.
It isn't really that Biden is failing to read the room. The problem is that Biden was never Presidential material. And he is much less today than he ever was before.
“ My favorite example came just after the 9/11 attacks, when Biden met with his Senate committee staffers and went into a “stream-of-consciousness monologue” about how to respond. “I’m groping here,” he confessed after a while, and then had a eureka moment. To assure the Arab world the U.S. “wasn’t bent on its destruction,” Michael Crowley reported in the New Republic, Biden declared: “Seems to me this would be a good time to send, no strings attached, a check for $200 million to Iran.”
According to Crowley, Biden “surveys the table with raised eyebrows, a How do ya like that? look on his face.” Staffers eventually broke the perplexed silence, offering a number of objections. It didn’t matter: “Joe Biden is barely listening anymore. He’s already moved on to something else.”
Crowley doesn’t indicate who his source was for that story in his piece or anywhere else as far as I can tell. There is no evidence that actually happened. Maybe it did, maybe it didn’t. But, there is no evidence it did and Crowley doesn’t even claim an anonymous source told him that it did.
That story reminds of the LBJ quote that some on the left love to throw around. Supposedly LBJ said, “If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you." to Bill Moyers in the 1960s in a one on one conversation. But, Moyers waited until LBJ and Lady Bird were dead before he made the claim that LBJ said it. No one can contradict the claim. Maybe he did, maybe he didn’t. But, there is no evidence that he did.
I know Jonah could care less that I’m disappointed in him for putting the unsourced, unconfirmed Biden story in his article, but I am. And yes I call out people who try to use the LBJ quote too.