Biden pleads, ‘Let me keep my job’
Hugo Gurdon
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President Joe Biden’s prime-time State of the Union speech brought to mind economist Thomas Sowell’s clear-eyed dictum, “When you want to help people, you tell them the truth. When you want to help yourself, you tell them what they want to hear.”
Biden wanted to help himself; he’s at just 44% public approval and is poised to declare his bid for reelection. He’s starting in a deep hole, so he said what he figured the public wanted to hear.
He began rather well, flattering Republicans as much as Democrats. He congratulated Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) on winning the gavel, ad-libbing, “I don’t want to ruin your reputation,” before saying he looked forward to working with him. It was charming, Biden at his best. A bit of friendly ribbing between political adversaries is what ordinary people warm to and like to hear.
But Biden was not telling the truth. He was trying to help himself. The truth is not that he is convivial Joe. His relations with Republicans more often involve grotesque exaggeration and revolting accusations of racism, such as when he accused the Georgia GOP of producing voting laws that were “Jim Crow on steroids.”
Biden’s speech quickly descended to two low parallel tracks. One was boasting of ersatz successes in his first term combined with a massive but unquantified list of promises to tax and spend from now until the crack of doom. The other path was Biden’s lightly veiled launch of his reelection bid, using the phrase “finish the job.”
What he really meant when he was saying this (repeatedly) was, “Let me keep my job.” He will base his claim to a second presidential term, as is customary, on supposedly marvelous success and the need for four more years to complete his task. (With absurd self-regard and grandiosity, he says the task includes a mission to “restore the soul of the nation.”)
The reasons Biden gave for his reelection were so numerous that enumerating them diminished their returns, making them flimsier and flimsier.
He boasted of capping the cost of insulin at $35 a month but said there are still “millions of Americans who are not on Medicare.” His implication was that he’ll expand socialized medicine in his second term, so “Let’s finish the job,” he said, meaning, “Let me keep my job.”
The law he signed lowering Obamacare premiums expires in 2025, so “let me keep my job.”
America, he said, was “at last stepping up to the challenge” of climate change but “there is so much more to do,” so “let me keep my job,” er, “we’ll finish the job.”
Biden boasted of starting to make the “wealthiest” pay their “fair share” of taxes but “there’s much more to do,” so “let me keep my job,” er, “let’s finish the job.”
He wants to quadruple tax on corporate stock buybacks — let’s stick it to those nasty job-creating plutocrats — by closing more loopholes, so “let’s finish the job,” by which, again, he meant “reelect me, and let me keep my job.”
Biden boasted of cutting shipping costs for families and consumers, but “let’s finish the job;” of increasing economic growth, but “let’s finish the job;” of wanting to provide preschool for 3- and 4-year-olds, but “let’s finish the job;” of connecting graduates to careers, but “let’s finish the job;” of reforming the police, but “let’s finish the job;” of wanting to “ban assault weapons again,” but “let’s finish the job.”
Biden is no orator, so these iterations — there were 14 in the speech — fell with resounding thuds. They were clunky bricks with which he intends to lay his path back to the White House.
His words were calculated to be what people wanted to hear rather than being the truth. Capping prescription costs stanches medical research and development; socialized medicine brings shortages, rationing, and low pay, as the massive health workers strike in Britain right now demonstrates; the aggressive left-wing climate change agenda likewise creates shortages, brownouts, higher costs, and real suffering for negligible benefit; the richest Americans pay a 25% tax rate while someone on average wage pays 20%, etc., etc.
Talk of finishing the job is a trick. It’s like former President Barack Obama’s promise to “fix” healthcare. Things are never fixed and finished. Leadership is a continuous process of improvement, not of completion and arrival in nirvana, as those on the Left, like Biden, want voters to believe.
What Biden presented was a mirage that melts back over the horizon with every step you take toward it. His first two years have been damaging and don’t merit a second term. But even if they did, rhetoric about finishing the job is a vaporous con.
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