What Are Joe Biden’s Fixed Principles? A crisis reveals a president with little introspection and even less penetration into the world’s problems. By Joseph Epstein
Joe Biden is the 46th U.S. president, the military’s commander in chief, leader of the free world. So why can’t I take him seriously? When he steps out to make a speech or give a rare press conference, he looks as if he is setting out to do a commercial to sell me gutters or roofing shingles. Mr. Biden strikes me as the Borax Man—a term from my Chicago youth for that slick salesman, whom you are always mistaken to allow in your house.
The Borax Man was a familiar type when I was growing up. So familiar that I dropped such a character, whom I named Sy Bourget, into a short story of mine called “Kaplan’s Big Deal.” In that story I wrote: “Bourget—he didn’t pronounce the t in his name—was so good, it used to be said, that he could sell aluminum siding to people who lived in high-rise buildings.” A main chancer, he studied human motives “toward the end of manipulating others to say yes.” Everyone, he believed, “was an operator, or at least wanted to be, and the only difference between people was that there were those who operated successfully and those who didn’t. Winners and losers, the old story.”
The problem Mr. Biden presents is that it is difficult to believe anything he says. The reason is that it is hard to believe that he himself really believes in much of anything, except getting ahead. As the American president—thanks to his good luck in having Donald Trump for an opponent—he has now surely accomplished this in excelsis.
Yet Mr. Biden lacks the convincing solemnity of manner, the gravitas that all world leaders, the fate of millions riding on their decisions, require. Instead he comes off as a man with little introspection and even less penetration into the problems facing the world. At a moment of crisis, these deficiencies carry grave consequences.
Belief on the part of a leader is of course conditional on the nature of the belief itself. George W. Bush, tutored by Dick Cheney, seems to have believed in nation building, which, as the example of Iraq has shown, wasn’t feasible. What does Joe Biden believe? He is a rosary-carrying Catholic who is all right with abortion, allowing politics to swamp theology. Having run for president as the centrist candidate, he straightaway proposed a slate of wildly progressive programs. Does he really believe in the efficacy of these programs, or has he decided he would like to inscribe himself in history as the 21st century’s Franklin D. Roosevelt ? Can a man without discernible beliefs be counted on, say, to defend Israel or any other of America’s allies should the need arise? Who can say?
The problem with a politician having no known beliefs is that it becomes difficult to believe him on nearly any subject apart from those touching on his own self-interest. This becomes especially so in the age of the speechwriter, when a politician is no longer the author of words for which he is held fully responsible. In his public appearances, Mr. Biden, who is properly chary of giving press conferences lest he lapse into one of his infamous gaffes, has come more to resemble the puppet in a ventriloquist’s act.
All politicians, as we say in Chicago, are guilty until proven innocent, which very few finally are. After more than 40 years in politics, Mr. Biden hasn’t been proven anything other than being in business for himself. In many ways he represents the purest type of the dreary politician, and yet, given the machinations of that trickster known as fate, he resides today in the best public housing in the land.
When Joe Biden wasn’t president I rather enjoyed his many gaffes. But now that he is U.S. president, the man ultimately responsible for the most consequential decisions, the stakes are higher and the figure of Mr. Biden, the Borax Man in the White House, is no longer amusing. It has become, in fact, more than a touch frightening.
Mr. Epstein is author, most recently, of “Gallimaufry: A Collection of Essays, Reviews, Bits.”
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