In fits and starts of anxious apprehension about next year’s presidential election, Democratic members of Congress (including one from here in the Land of Sky Blue Waters) and at least two high-profile columnists have argued that President Biden should abandon his candidacy for a second term in the White House.
I doubt, however, that Joe Biden is listening to them. He’s got a few other things on his mind: a Big Three Auto/UAW strike; a war in Ukraine; an Alabama senator who is hamstringing the leadership of American armed forces; an only son enmeshed in legal battles with the Justice Department, and a Republican House that’s worthy of the old Truman nickname of “the Do-Nothing Congress.”
Except, I doubt old Harry Truman would call this bunch the “Do-Nothings,” for they are actually more like a combination of “Know-Nothings” mixed with the kids who once occupied the high school detention center.
Witness one Lauren Boebert of Colorado. U.S. Rep. Boebert, who in her public-private life cannot be trusted to attend a performance without being invited to leave by security guards, is a rising Republican star.
Indeed, it will be interesting to see if Boebert serves as one of the impeachment managers for U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan and Speaker Kevin McCarthy should the House actually approve impeachment articles (for something or other) against Joe Biden.
Meanwhile, as the nation lurches toward a government shutdown, the House Republican leadership busily occupies itself with overseeing that grave and plain constitutional responsibility of attempting to defend a former president in all of his four various and sundry state and federal criminal indictments.
Key to this defense strategy by Jordan and his second chair, Rep. James Comer, is to demand that both state and federal prosecutors check in with the House Judiciary Committee about whether their investigations are being conducted with absolute and scrupulous fairness to defendant Donald Trump.
These investigative inquiries by the House are obviously within the scope of each congressional committee’s jurisdiction pursuant to its oversight obligations under … under … the well-established Article I responsibility to make sure that your party’s nominee doesn’t go to prison. Part of that congressional job is drumming up an impeachment against the incumbent Democrat according to the well-known House precedent in the Benghazi case.
Meanwhile, in the midst of this domestic dysfunction and chaos, Joe Biden has to navigate the job of reinventing American foreign policy after it was subjected to four years of an semi-adolescent who by all accounts was either unable or unwilling to read his daily intelligence briefing or required color charts and graphs to comprehend America’s daily political and military challenges abroad.
[image_caption]Albert Turner Goins Sr.[/image_caption]
Yeah, it has to be a bit discouraging if not downright disheartening for Biden. He is simply still struggling despite passing more legislation than any president since LBJ or FDR; getting the nation vaccinated; reducing inflation from when he first entered office; stimulating job growth — but then reading the daily polls reflecting how the spoiled American “consumertariat” nevertheless are dissatisfied with our economy.
Wow. It seems that maybe Donald Trump was actually right about something he once muttered several years back: that being president is harder than even he thought.
And, having written this, I’m now not so sure I even want the job — even if Biden does change his mind about running for a second term.
Yes, Joe Biden reconsidering his decision to run for reelection is perhaps really just what this seemingly self-absorbed nation actually deserves.
Albert Turner Goins Sr. is a mostly retired lawyer who lives in White Bear Lake.
