RUTHFULLY YOURS

‘Biden confronts a host of problems he can’t do much to solve.” So determines John Harwood of CNN.

There’s some truth to this, of course — although my sympathy for opportunistic progressives who discover that they are not, actually, omnipotent, is as limited as one might expect. Still, you’d assume that any president who was facing a tidal wave of bad news would be looking to rack up as many little wins as possible. Inexplicably, with President Biden, that assumption seems to be wrong.

I have read the judicial decision that ended the CDC’s transportation-based mask mandate, and I find myself ambivalent about its reasoning. There is nothing wrong with the judge who issued it being 35 years old, or with her having been appointed by President Trump, or with her having failed to satisfy the American Bar Association, and nor is there is anything inherently wrong with judges deciding whether the government has broken the law. On the merits, however, I could have gone either way. Interpretively and semantically, this was a tricky one. Had Biden’s order been upheld, it would have been legitimate. That it was struck down is legitimate, too. Sometimes, judging can be tough.

The policy, by contrast, was not a tricky one. The policy was remarkably stupid, and that President Biden decided to renew it not once, but twice, after it had clearly run its course, was a testament to his near total lack of political guile. Back in November, I asked, “If, tomorrow, you told a plane full of Americans that they no longer needed to wear their masks, how many do you think would still have them on by the time you’d hung the intercom back on its hook? Twenty? Ten? Three?” Last night, we got an answer to this question. So thrilled by the judge’s decision were America’s beleaguered airlines that most of them chose to broadcast the news mid-flight, where it was met by a supermajority of passengers with the sort of glee that has usually been reserved for the end of a war. Had he been smart, Joe Biden could have owned that glee. Instead, it came in spite of him, courtesy of a Republican-appointed judge, from — of all places — Florida.

Why? What did Biden get for his recalcitrance? An extra two or three weeks of a policy that everyone has known for a while was absurd? For months, it has been obvious that there is a big gap between what people are willing to tell pollsters about their attitude toward Covid and what people will actually do when given a free choice. Normal people have been able to sense this. Joe Biden has not — even as his approval ratings have dropped inexorably into the mire. He didn’t notice it when the Senate voted 57 to 40 to end the transit mandate. He didn’t notice it when vulnerable Democrats in the House began to tell journalists that they were in favor of “whatever gets rid of mask mandates as quickly as possible.” He didn’t notice it when SNL — yes, even SNL — started making fun of progressive hysteria over masks. Now, it is too late.

The headwinds against this administration are real. Indeed, they have now grown so strong that the Democrats will probably end up regretting that they won the last presidential election. And yet, irrespective of the challenges that were thrown before him, one simply cannot imagine, say, Bill Clinton making Joe Biden’s mistakes. This president’s most famous campaign promise was that he was going to “shut down the virus, not the country.” Translation: “I’ll make things normal again.” Instead, he has been on autopilot in the other direction. Fifteen months into his presidency, Biden has agreed to relinquish his emergency powers only when he has been forced to do so (as with the transportation mask mandate, the large-employer vaccine mandate, and the eviction moratorium) or when it was in the progressive movement’s interest (as with Title 42). For this, there can be no excuse. It is bad policy, and it is political malpractice to boot. Strong leadership does not mean following the public in its every whim. But it does not mean ignoring it completely, either.

Joe Biden did not begin his presidency with many advantages. He is a mediocre thinker and a sub-par politician, and the circumstances in which he took over were grim. But, by repeatedly allowing himself to be co-opted by the silliest people in the country, he has guaranteed that there will be no escape from his predicament. As a candidate, Biden understood that Twitter is not real life and that the average voter doesn’t like the progressive movement very much. As president, Biden has forgotten both of these things. In response, the country has moved on without him. It won’t be coming back.