David Marcus: Joe Biden is in the White House but many voters aren't sure who is really in charge
Barring even further declines in capacity, Joe Biden is set to be president of the USA for roughly another five months. But most people don't seem to believe he's really in charge.
On Tuesday afternoon, President Biden, or what’s left of him, shuffled through a White House TV studio to a tiny desk that looked like it had been put on clearance at IKEA for six weeks, and proceeded to ramble about "investing in America," before ignoring shouted questions from the press with a bizarre grin upon his visage.
The message from this highly scripted event was crystal clear, and it had nothing to do with the economy. The real message that can no longer be ignored is that Joseph Robinette Biden is no longer running the country, if he ever was.
Later in the day, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre insisted that the president is working tirelessly to bring about a cease-fire in Gaza that Biden keeps saying is right around the corner. In fact, we have all watched Biden, lying on the sand like a beached whale in Delaware for the past week.
PRESIDENT BIDEN SMILES, IGNORES PRESS SHOUTING QUESTIONS FOR A FULL MINUTE AT WHITE HOUSE EVENT
When I ask Americans coast to coast if they believe that Biden is in charge of the day-to-day operations of the United States of America, the answer I most often get, from both sides, is outright, prolonged laughter.
Where the opinions start to differ is in regard to whether, or how much, who the specific individual sitting behind the Resolute Desk matters. Is the president just a manager who gently directs the efforts of unelected career professionals, or is the president a CEO whose imagination and ability matter?
The question reminds me of a story I once heard about former President Trump.
I was attending the National Security Seminar at the Army War College in 2018 where I heard a diplomat who had served under both Presidents Trump and Barack Obama speak. This person was asked if the phones at embassies ever ring off the hook because then-President Trump seemed to change U.S. policy in an overnight tweet?
BIDEN LAUGHS AND SMIRKS AS THE PRESS IS USHERED OUT OF THE OVAL OFFICE WITHOUT QUESTIONS
The diplomat chuckled, and confirmed such things did happen, but they went on to say that sometimes, even often, diplomacy can get stuck in ruts, where everyone takes the path of least resistance, and that Trump had an ability to disrupt those ruts in ways that proved beneficial.
We saw evidence of this when Trump moved the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, or took out Iranian terrorist Qassem Soliemani, or when he reportedly threatened to bomb Moscow if Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine.
These were decisions made by an individual, by Trump, not by top men and women anonymously assembled somewhere to maintain the status quo.
Today, barring even further declines in capacity, Biden is set to be president of the United States for roughly another five months. Does any sane person think that Biden is making the kind of hard calls Trump was? Does anyone believe that foreign leaders and regimes, be they friend or foe, have even the slightest interest in what Biden says anymore?
In an election year so full of surprises and twists, from an assassination attempt to a Democratic Party presidential nominee who received no votes, one can understand why our total and complete lack of current presidential leadership has been little noticed. But it is a scandal of the highest order.
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Just three weeks ago at the Democratic National Convention, the parents of Hersh Goldberg-Polin took to the stage to demand the return of their son from the clutches of Hamas. Instead, just days later, the monsters executed him in cold blood.
That is the state of American leadership under Biden. Nobody fears him, nobody courts his favor, nobody even pays the slightest bit of attention to him.
There is a reason that the founders, in their wisdom, chose to grant so much power to one person in the office of the presidency. One hundred seventy-five years later, President Harry S. Truman summed up those reasons with a simple phrase, "The buck stops here."
The only thing that stops with Biden is any semblance of respect from the rest of the world for our nation’s commander in chief. It is hard to overstate just how dangerous that is.
Americans deserve to know who is running their country, and today, we don’t have the slightest idea. All we know is that it is demonstrably not Biden.
