News that I missed, courtesy of The Babylon Bee:
WILMINGTON, DE—Staffers have revealed that Biden was the victim of yet another tragic accident after his arm fell completely off as he attempted to open up a jar of peanut butter.
“Yeah– it just literally fell off,” said one aide, confirming the story. “I walked into the kitchen and there was his arm, just lying on the floor. Mr. Biden didn’t seem to notice it was gone. I’m told this is a normal occurrence for people his age so everything’s fine!”
Once Biden noticed his arm was on the floor, he bent over to pick it up and his nose fell off. Aides rushed in to wrestle the confused Biden to the floor and take him to the hospital for reassembly.
“Nothing to see here,” insisted a spokesperson. “Biden will be calling a lid during his 2-week recovery time and looks forward to reappearing to take charge of the country and defeat the virus!”
Go here to read the rest. So Biden broke his right foot playing with his dog? Lack of balance is a classic symptom of dementia. Go here to read all about it. We have had more than a few presidents who were not brilliant. Biden is the first who was mentally afflicted at the time of his successful fraud election. Veep Harris had better start preparing her speech to the nation after Biden gets the heave ho, wakes up dead one morning or is observed eating grass naked on the White House lawn.
Hmm. Strategic illness or real? Silence for Biden at the present moment is most useful for many reasons.
We have had more than a few presidents who were not brilliant.
Ronald Reagan had a natural talent for public administration and a capacity to formulate and apply political principles that made up for the fact that he had less ‘g’ than Jimmy Carter and Richard Nixon. (Note, though, that Reagan and his brother cadged college degrees at a time when maybe 6% of each cohort attended baccalaureate granting institutions, even though they came from the sort of family where that would not be a general expectation and when the country was facing inclement economic circumstances. Note also that the Reagan brothers grew up in the most impecunious substratum of the middle class and both died wealthy from private-sector earnings. Bill Clinton’s private sector earnings to date have been limited to the summer jobs he had 50-odd years ago).
Lyndon Johnson I think you’d call ‘cunning’ rather than intelligent. You can see what that got us. Warren Harding made a prosperous living for himself running his own business. His talents there didn’t scale well.
We wouldn’t think anything of it if he hadn’t been hiding out in his basement for months and if he hadn’t needed a TelePrompTer to answer softball questions from James Corden.
Not brilliant category:
Jerry Ford who liberated Poland; Andrew Jackson who had no clue about banking; Jimmy Carter who thought his time was well spent micro managing such tasks as determining the schedule for the White House tennis court; Warren G. Harding who confessed after he was elected President how ill prepared intellectually for the job he was; Ulysses Grant who was a success only in war, matrimony and writing his memoirs (I have always thought that it was good for Grant’s reputation that he died just as his memoir reached the ending of the Civil War.) Not being brilliant of course has nothing to do with academic degrees and does not mean that the man might not be able in other spheres of life, Andrew Jackson for example being an untutored but very able military commander.
China Joe
Didn’t
Win . . .
We Were Robbed.
Welcome to the Idiocracy.
LBJ and his dem congress declared wars on poverty and North Vietnam, and poverty and North Vietnam won.
Fraudulent-Elect (crook, pedophile, rapist) China Joe and Vice Fraudulent-Elect The ‘Ho Harris are simply two additional idiocrats of a long line of stupid from both establishment parties.
Their unpronounced slogan is, “Make America Poor Again.” [While their backers rake in trillions.]
A. Jackson may not have known banking (when he vetoed the National Bank charter renewal) but he knew class warfare – the westerners vs. the Eastern commercial/financial interests. And, so America was consigned to 100 years of unchecked ‘wildcat’ banks and numerous panics. To be fair, the birth (and numerous, massive authority/power expansions) of the Fed didn’t end the business cycle, either.
Jerry Ford who liberated Poland; Andrew Jackson who had no clue about banking; Jimmy Carter who thought his time was well spent micro managing such tasks as determining the schedule for the White House tennis court;
None of these are reflective of intellectual deficits. Carter was addled by details and had trouble setting priorities and delegating authority (note John Roche’s account of how Lyndon Johnson suffered from the same problem).
Ford was an intelligent man (he graduated in the top third of his class at Yale Law School), but had no intellectual interests; you use your head at work, and you work to earn money so you can swim and play golf on your off-hours. Ford’s individual points in his debate answer were correct. Albania and Yugoslavia didn’t pay any heed to Soviet preferences and Roumania was only selectively co-operative. Hungary had its own innovative policy initiatives. No clue why Ford uttered the phrase ‘No Soviet Domination’ in re Eastern Europe in toto and then refused to correct himself other than (1) he had a lot of memorized canned answers in his head (which he got garbled) and (2) he figured he better brazen it out. Nothing about policy in the Ford Administration suggested he literally believed what he said.
If you read Ron Nessen’s memoir of the Ford Administration, you can see some of his short-comings (and Nessen very much admired Ford). He was a career legislator who had never supervised an operation more complicated than his office staff. He gets into the White House, and his staff is a complex derived from four different pipelines, and they don’t mesh well. A particular source of trouble (per Nessen) was Robert Hartmann, who had been Ford’s chief of staff in Congress. Ford demoted him to a position in the public relations apparat. He was sore about that and boycotted staff meetings, his own staff produced an inferior work product, and he leaked sh!t to Evans and Novak. Ford was never going to get rid of him. Also, Donald Rumsfeld and Henry Kissinger despised each other.
Another problem with Ford was that he was a lawyer whose frame of reference was the economic regime in World War II. That’s kind of funny given that his (adoptive) father was a prosperous merchant and Ford himself had worked in the business. The WIN program seemed like nothing so much as an attempt to revive wartime drives to save scrap metal and the like. It had nothing to do with actually containing currency erosion. The Fed chairman at the time (Arthur Burns) was confused and incompetent, but none of the three presidents he worked for saw fit to fire him. (He had persuaded himself that inflation was inexplicable; other economists like James Tobin had somehow persuaded themselves that it was impossible to stabilize prices without some godawful half-generation long recession. That Wm. McChesney Martin had put an end to postwar inflation in 1951-52 without inducing a recession slipped their mind).
LBJ and his dem congress declared wars on poverty and North Vietnam, and poverty and North Vietnam won.
They were primarily occupied in fighting the Viet Cong, who were inconsquential after 1968. North VietNam won only after the U.S. Congress fecklessly cut off aid to the South.
Poverty per se was no more of a problem in 1969 than it was in 1965, and (see James Q Wilson’s research in Boston) fighting ‘poverty’ was a priority for government officials and policy wonks, not ordinary people. What was winning was anomie and what’s delicately called ‘social disorganization’, and the political class took its time doing jack squat about that. (Now, they’re in the business of trashing what progress has been made in social renorming).
“Carter was addled by details and had trouble setting priorities and delegating authority”
In short, not brilliant.
“Ford was an intelligent man”
Naw, he really wasn’t. Ford had a gregarious personality that caused him to rise to be House Minority Leader, but he was completely out of his depth as President. I thought the most symbolic policy of his waste of space administration was the WIN buttons (Whip Inflation Now). He was also oblivious to his limitations as demonstrated by his attempt to con Reagan at the 1980 convention into making him co-President if Ford agreed to be Veep. Reagan wisely broke off negotiations although he then unwisely chose Bush and thus unwittingly inflicted the Bush dynasty on the nation.
To LBJ the year was always 1936. His main domestic goal was always to have his own bigger version of the New Deal. LBJ is such a lout personally, we sometimes lose sight of just how wrongheaded almost all of his policies were.
“Veep Harris had better start preparing her speech to the nation after Biden gets the heave ho, wakes up dead one morning or is observed eating grass naked on the White House lawn.”
Daniel 4:28-33:
28 All this came upon King Nebuchadnez′zar. 29 At the end of twelve months he was walking on the roof of the royal palace of Babylon, 30 and the king said, “Is not this great Babylon, which I have built by my mighty power as a royal residence and for the glory of my majesty?” 31 While the words were still in the king’s mouth, there fell a voice from heaven, “O King Nebuchadnez′zar, to you it is spoken: The kingdom has departed from you, 32 and you shall be driven from among men, and your dwelling shall be with the beasts of the field; and you shall be made to eat grass like an ox; and seven times shall pass over you, until you have learned that the Most High rules the kingdom of men and gives it to whom he will.” 33 Immediately the word was fulfilled upon Nebuchadnez′zar. He was driven from among men, and ate grass like an ox, and his body was wet with the dew of heaven till his hair grew as long as eagles’ feathers, and his nails were like birds’ claws.
He was also oblivious to his limitations as demonstrated by his attempt to con Reagan into making him co-President if he agreed to be Veep.
Huh? That was his negotiating position. I’m not seeing how it was indicative of anything about him being oblivious to his limitations. Ford knew as much as anyone at that point about the mechanics of the job, btw. I’m not seeing how it’s a con, either. There was no indication of any chicanery on Ford’s part. I don’t recall that the idea of putting him on the ticket was his initiative.
While we’re at it, Ford wasn’t peculiarly gregarious, just not odd and awkward like Nixon and Carter. (And not gross and pathological like Kennedy and Johnson). What’s interesting about Ford is that his skills lay in navigating the politics of the Republican congressional caucus. He never had much experience with vigorous electioneering after knocking off his predecessor in a primary in 1948. AFAIK, he wasn’t a known maven in any area of policy, either. The analogue to Ford today is Nancy Pelosi. The difference between the two is that Ford wasn’t malevolent, wasn’t so mad to hold on to public office that he’d knocking about Congress at age 80, and gave discernible evidence of being much smarter than Nancy Pelosi.
You insist on confounding intelligence with other useful attributes. Richard Nixon suffered no intellectual deficits whatsoever. He was, however, an irredeemably lousy administrator. Carter’s problem has never been a deficit of intelligence, but a deficit of time-management skills and a deficit of any sense of what motivates people. (Tip O’Neill on Carter, “This guy is hopeless…”). Ford and Bush I present interesting examples (and I’ve known a few) of intelligent men with zero erudition.
As for Johnson, pretty much nothing worked out. It was either a wreck in real time or it had some unfortunate downstream consequences the political class refuses to repair (‘civil rights’ laws) or repairs only piecemeal to avoid some imminent crisis (Medicaid and Medicare). We’ve had 50 years since he left office and only two consequential officials of his administration are still alive. He still looks wretched.
Huh? That was his negotiating position.
Yep, one which flew in the face of the entire history of the office of the Presidency. He was also overlooking that he had not been a particularly able president, to put it mildly, who Reagan almost denied the nomination to in 1976.
“I’m not seeing how it’s a con, either.”
It was implied that if Reagan did not have a moderate on the ticket he would lose the support of the moderate wing of the party. Ford didn’t make the threat that bluntly, but those around him sure brought it up.
“You insist on confounding intelligence with other useful attributes.”
Nope, when it comes to being President I take brilliant as not making stupid errors in office, which is why I stressed it has nothing to do with earned degrees or with being able in other areas of life. Lincoln was brilliant in office, Wilson was not.
“As for Johnson, pretty much nothing worked out.”
The lack of comprehension by Johnson was breathtaking. At one time during the Vietnam War Johnson offered a Marshal plan to North Vietnam and he boasted to an aide, “Old Ho can’t turn that down!” He honestly, or dishonestly, thought that there was no problem in the world that rivers of Federal funds could not cure.
“or is observed eating grass naked on the White House lawn”. . .
. . .that gave me a hearty laugh!
Hey Tito, that dog he was allegedly playing with might be out there grazing beside him!
Nope, when it comes to being President I take brilliant as not making stupid errors in office,
That’s an idiosyncratic definition. And the Arms-for-hostages swaps certainly complicate the assessment of Reagan.
It was implied that if Reagan did not have a moderate on the ticket he would lose the support of the moderate wing of the party. Ford didn’t make the threat that bluntly, but those around him sure brought it up.
‘Ticket balancing’ is something reporters yap about. As far as I’m aware, the only presidential nominee in the last 60-odd years who behaved as if it was a consideration of note was Jimmy Carter in 1976. I suppose you could say Reagan in 1980, but George Bush wasn’t some random squish from Michigan; he was the candidate who’d won a quarter of the ballots cast in Republican primaries and caucuses. (NB, Reagan had attempted a ‘ticket balancing’ gambit at the 1976 convention with the Richard Schweiker maneuver; it got him 10 votes out of the Penna delegation; I doubt Reagan was impressed with ticket-balancing arguments).
And the Arms-for-hostages swaps certainly complicate the assessment of Reagan.
Even Homer nods occasionally. Even Lincoln made the occasional mistake, as several of the Army of the Potomac commanders illustrate.