By Jim Geraghty
Wednesday, July 20, 2022
Last week I wrote, “Democrats are just tired of Joe Biden
and of having to explain away his poor performance. . . . Nobody’s willing to
cover for this guy anymore; no one is inclined to avert their eyes when Biden
or his wife blurts out something tone-deaf now.”
Yesterday, Ed Morrissey noticed that Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Fallon are now making jokes about
Biden’s age and unpopularity. (“I hope they have air conditioning over
there, because his bones are made of peanut brittle. . . . There is something
older than Joe Biden. It’s the universe.”) Biden’s been unpopular since last
summer and old for a few decades; but something changed recently, and I think
in some Democrats’ minds, the image of Biden fist-bumping a Saudi prince whom
he once pledged to turn into a pariah was the straw that broke the camel’s
back. (No, that’s not a Saudi Arabia joke.) Biden just looks too hapless, too
weak, and too easily pushed around by events for Democrats to feel all that
motivated to defend him.
And I think this newfound, long-repressed exasperation
with Biden is bursting out from underneath the surface in all kinds of
unexpected ways. Here’s the ABC News headline about Biden announcing “executive
actions to address climate change”: “Biden
to announce executive actions on climate change that still fall short.”
Yikes! Biden hasn’t even announced it yet, and it’s
getting slammed as insufficient in a news headline, not an op-ed or
column. Of course, the story is framed from the perspective of green activists
who want Biden to do more, so this is a criticism from the left, not the right.
But fascinatingly, the article, at least as it’s written this morning, doesn’t
include any quotes from disappointed climate-change activists. Reporters Ben
Gittleson and Morgan Winsor just assert that these are feel-good half-measures:
President Joe Biden is expected to
announce on Wednesday a few executive actions to address climate change, with a
focus on helping Americans facing extreme heat — but the steps fall far short of
the more sweeping measures climate activists are calling for.
In fact, the directives largely appear to provide more funding
to or otherwise strengthen existing programs. . . .
The White House said Biden will
also announce “additional actions to boost the domestic offshore wind
industry.” Further information on those actions was not immediately available,
and it was unclear whether they would be new or impactful.
Yesterday brought another example of newfound press
skepticism of the usual Biden team spin. Long overseas trips can be exhausting
for lots of people, particularly those who are about to turn 80 years old.
Biden returned to the White House from his Middle East trip at 1 a.m. Sunday
and had nothing on his public schedule Monday or Tuesday.
Yesterday’s White House press conference featured several questions from
reporters asking just what Biden had been doing the past two days.
Here’s how White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre
handled the question:
So, he’s been in meetings! I was
scheduled to meet with him today in the Oval Office, so he’s been meeting with
his senior staff. He’s been meeting with staff. I think some of you might have
seen him when, when the first lady of Ukraine was meeting with our first lady.
I believe you saw him very briefly. So he’s just been very busy dealing with
the issues of the American people and meeting with his staff, and senior staff,
the last two days.
Biden is scheduled to depart the White House today at
11:45 a.m., and he’s scheduled to give remarks shortly before 3 p.m. in
the afternoon. The last public event on his schedule was the GCC + 3 Meeting in
Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, and a working lunch at the Ritz-Carlton in Jeddah at
8 a.m. Washington time Sunday, 3 p.m. local time in the
kingdom.
In light of all this, it is not exactly shocking to hear
that the White House is “considering a major overhaul of its press and
communications shop in the coming weeks,” as NBC News reports.
But as I noted last month, for all of her flaws, Karine
Jean-Pierre isn’t exactly the real problem. If the White House doesn’t want
tough questions about the president not doing any public events for three days,
then Biden shouldn’t go three days without doing any public events. There is no
good answer for Jean-Pierre to give in that circumstance, other than to say,
“He’s almost 80, he’s jet-lagged, and he needs to rest up. If there’s something
that needs immediate attention, his staff will wake him.”
And if a normal presidential overseas trip exhausts Biden
for about 72 hours, then maybe he shouldn’t be president.
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