Joe Biden vs the Pundits

Joe Biden’s decline into the ravaging maelstrom of deep old age is becoming the clearest measure that these are indeed the last days of American democracy. This fumbling enfeebled man is proving derelict as an electoral system is systemically rigged by a Democratic Party out to turn America into a woke wasteland. Old Joe sleeps through every event, every crisis, shaming America with his doddering, flatulent, stumbling piety that is the embodiment of that shambling incontinent liberalism that would soil the legacy of the Found Fathers…

It pained me to write that.

Not because I thought any of it true but because it reminded me that political punditry is often character assassination by another name. It isn’t difficult to weaponise rhetoric, weave language in some attractive way to deceive and flatter. Want a thousand words that pander to your world fears? We can do that. We can all write a hit piece that will confirm your deepest prejudices. The only question is: why would we want to do that?

Why do pundits pundit? It’s a question that should puzzle anybody interested in politics in this modern era. It’s also a question that crossed my mind when reading Douglas Murray’s ad hominem on President Joe Biden in The Telegraph last week. The article, titled “Joe Biden is just the start of a crisis in Western leadership that emboldens our enemies”, was quoted widely, often citing Murray as an authoritative voice on the US scene. He might well be just that: a talented writer with connections on the inside that reveal the true situation in Washington. Yet one can only judge the words he offers and when those words include the assessment that “it is increasingly clear to everybody in America – Democrat and Republican alike – that Biden is deteriorating fast”, then one also has the right to ask: “Really?” and “Everybody?”

So why, again, do pundits pundit? What motivates them? Is it a wish to assess events according to some notion of fairness? Or is it about winning a battle through the proxy of some other argument? Or is it the old story of words flowing where the money arrives quickest?

To ask that in more specific terms: is Biden objectively a “bad president” because the decisions he makes are objectively bad or is he subjectively a “bad president” simply because he belongs to the “other side”? One hopes the question is a fair one, though that also assumes we still believe in the rather archaic notion of fairness. Sometimes it’s not clear if we do.

But let’s just rewind a little and offer a reminder of where we were just over a year ago. Joe Biden had never been the best candidate to become president. This partly explains the problems he continues to have with his presidency. Biden was only always the best candidate to defeat Donald Trump. He was old-politics, beltway establishment, brazenly dull, and if you could get behind that slight naff “Grandpa Joe” vibe, he was essentially decent. This was important because of the ability of the Republican machine to demonise a candidate or a cause. Moderate Joe sat well in their blind spot and electoral defeat followed.

Biden’s grandpa-isms did mean, however, that few people expected his presidency to launch America into some great recovery. He wasn’t going to inspire like Kennedy or even draw a nation together like FDR (even though the 32nd president is clearly his model). His presidency was going to be about getting things on the level. If Obama was known as “No Drama Obama”, Biden was always going to be “Hidin’ Biden” or the president who would eschew the limelight in favour of some old-fashioned graft.

And so it has proved. Biden has been largely absent from the national conversation – although by “largely absent” we mean returning things back to the pre-Trump White House when presidents didn’t micro-manage their publicity – and into that absence, many have projected their own versions of Joe Biden’s America. You see the fabrications spin out across the partisan networks like OAN and Fox News: that the infrastructure bill is really a Republican victory; that Biden is out to restrict religious liberty; and that even Big Bird has become synonymous with Big Brother (think about it, people: the initials are the same!)

The talking points are hammered home every night and the lies grow more egregious. Some attest that Biden is publicly flatulent. Others say that he is fading fast. He is accused of once disrespecting a dead Navy SEAL whose father claims that the then Vice President asked: “Did your son always have balls the size of cue balls?”, which sounds like Biden in that it sounds like a sincere but crude attempt at flattery, which might have worked in other contexts. Meanwhile, rumours abound that a Florida grand jury has indicted Biden on charges of leaking classified national security information. Then there are the countless photographs of Biden with his eyes closed. The President is a serial napper, we’re told, and unfit for office. They range from believable to the outright crazy. On Twitter, Nevada Republican Party Chairwoman Amy Tarkanian wrote that: “The word around Rome is that Biden’s meeting with the Pope was unusually long because Biden had a bit of an [sic] ‘bathroom accident’ at the Vatican & it had to be addressed prior to him leaving. I know we joke often about this, but this is the actual rumour going around Rome now.”

At a better time and place, none of this would enter the mainstream but we are neither at a better time nor better place. In the UK, especially, these stories and rumours emerge under the cover of reporting what’s happening in America and there’s very little pushback because punditry isn’t academia, where there is a rigorous system of sourcing and attribution.

Murray’s piece for The Telegraph last week was like so many that uncritically channel the talking points of right-wing media. He commented upon “Biden’s bizarre reference to American baseball pitcher Satchel Paige as ‘the great Negro at the time’” which countless fact-checkers have already pointed out is missing context. Biden had said: “I’ve adopted the attitude of the great Negro — at the time, pitcher in the Negro Leagues — went on to become a great pitcher in the pros — in Major League Baseball after Jackie Robinson. His name was Satchel Paige.” It was a typical Bidenism: fumbling around rhetorically for a meaning that’s coming but elides with the words already given to produce linguistic chaos.

Yet this is not the only example. Murray runs us through a litany of complaints that could have been taken straight from Sean Hannity: Biden is sleeping on the job, health issues, missing in action, lack of backbone on the international front, culture warrior.. He accuses Biden of everything short of wearing Jill’s high heels.

Two words notably missing, however, were “infrastructure” and “jobs”, the two key metrics of Biden’s first year. Biden has now signed the $1 trillion infrastructure bill that Donald Trump had spent four years promising it was coming soon yet failed to deliver. In October, the administration also saw 531,000 jobs added to the US economy, in addition to growth earlier in the year which was, according to The Washington Post, grossly underreported by the matter of “626,000 jobs — that’s the largest underestimate of any other comparable period, going back to 1979.”

That’s not to say that Biden’s first year hasn’t been without problems. Judged with a greater sense of proportion, AUKUS was a diplomatic mess, though it remains unclear whether that was a Biden problem as much as the clumsiness of a young administration rushing to reorientate US posture towards China. Getting troops out of Afghanistan was messy, indicative of Biden’s preference for speed over planning, but the withdrawal should eventually be seen as a success. On top of that is the vaccine rollout but with the pandemic still not over it’s unclear where America goes next.

Not that this reading of events will win many over, not when bad faith continues to flourish, when the provocative is privileged, and when every partisan picks their poison thinking it will heal them. That is the greater shame here. Political punditry has, in the past, aspired to be great art, proving that debate can be enriching. These days, it aspires to pastiche. It’s a world of dial-a-rant convenience in which appetites are satisfied but everybody is left hungry.