The president is often called the leader of the free world. The position exudes strength, power, leadership, and admiration.
Yet with this month’s debacle in Afghanistan, the Taliban’s subsequent accession, and the terrorist attack at Kabul airport by ISIS-K, the presidency’s reputation is coming into question.
Joe Biden has looked dazed and confused. He has stated incorrect information as fact. He has refused to answer questions at press conferences. On more than one occasion, he has slipped out, saying he wasn’t “supposed to answer” questions — as he did yesterday at FEMA headquarters. All of this invites the question: Who is telling him what he is “supposed” to do? Is Biden really president?
Biden has looked exceptionally weak in handling this crisis. Moreover, the more Biden speaks after each mishap, the more he looks like he is not in control. When he mentions needing permission to call on questions from a free press, it raises concerns over who is, in fact, leading our country.
Biden should not need a learning curve. He has nearly fifty years in government and two terms as vice president under his belt. Yet his presidency has been a series of blunders since he was inaugurated, and this latest one is only the worst so far.
Biden’s claim that Afghanistan was not in danger of the quick Taliban takeover that followed reinforces the perception that he is lost and unsure of his surroundings. When he refuses to take questions from the press or says things such as “he is not supposed to” take questions, it should be asked, who exactly is telling the leader of the free world what he can or cannot do? Who is telling the most powerful man in the world who he can or cannot speak to?
Even the most negative, cynical critic of Donald Trump must admit that he projected strength as president and actively engaged with the media. No one needed “proof of life” from him. Trump wasn’t even afraid to vigorously, at times with open hostility, accuse the media of rudeness and liberal bias. But he did not appear to call from a pre-approved list of reporters or announce he needed permission to talk to them.
Biden, in contrast, almost seems to be taking orders from someone behind the scenes, as if his advisers were in charge of him and not his aides. Only those in Biden’s close circles can actually say for sure whether this is true.
