Oh yes he did.
In his trip to Poland last weekend, Joe Biden did indeed call for regime change in Russia. He also said that the US would respond “in kind” – his words, not anyone else’s – to a Russian chemical attack in Ukraine. That’s a reversal of US policy of some 25 years since we signed the United Nations International Chemical Weapons Convention in 1997 – and de facto, prior to that. Oh, and he suggested that US troops would soon be in Ukraine to “see for yourselves” how things were going there.
Perhaps realizing how dangerous the President’s offhand remarks were, “White House Staffers” – in all probability Chief of Staff Ron Klain – anonymously tried to walk them back immediately. But when asked at a press conference on Monday about the spin, Biden appeared to be confused, asking “what’s getting walked back?” He was then asked to clarify his three statements and responded “None of the three occurred.” Except they did, and he was recorded saying them.
He then insulted reporters who tried to ask followup questions about possible problems his regime change statement might create, calling their queries “ridiculous” and “stupid.”
But they’re not. They are examples of rapidly rising concern over the current occupant of the White House and his penchant for “gaffes.” Which, as presidential declarations of policy, rain down chaos on our country’s relations with a world that expects a steady and comprehensible course from the superpower supposedly leading the free countries of the planet.
Instead, we’re more often seeing a confused old man who seems to have both memory and anger issues. It would be a mere annoyance if we were talking about the doddering guy across the fence who keeps firing off profanity-laced rants about the dog you’ve told him numerous times you haven’t ever owned. In the President of the United States, the Commander in Chief of a military in possession of thousands of nuclear weapons, such lapses in reason, memory and self-control are soul-freezing. Or at the very least, worthy of attention and unease.
It’s not as though this is unknown territory. During the last two years of the Wilson administration, presidential duties were essentially discharged by the wife and personal physician of a zombie. In the late 1950s President Eisenhower had a heart condition that caused great concern for his health. When the young President Kennedy was assassinated his vice-president had known serious illnesses and the two next in the constitutional line of succession were 71 and 86 years old, respectively. Thus arrived the 25th Amendment, mostly crafted by a man who died of a heart attack on the Senate floor. Now that’s irony…
But would use of the Amendment move us forward? Think “President Harris,” and despair. A woman with no known skills, little useful knowledge, a basket of grievances and a nervous cackle that makes one look carefully for the dungeon’s exits is not a good match for the office once occupied by Jefferson, Lincoln and Reagan.
Better to elect the strongest conservative congressional majority possible this November, accompanied by similar electoral successes at the state and local level. Together, those may act as a brake on the greatest foolishness and dangers to the Republic in the two subsequent years until we can at last correct the fraud political, bureaucratic and media elites perpetrated on this country with the election of a man who can’t remember from one day to the next what he said the day before and becomes angry when asked about it.
That’s a worrisome look, one we should all want to rectify – while the damage he’s doing is still survivable.
