Like a modern von Hindenburg, President Joe Biden, bright white chompers beaming through a big smile, welcomed President-elect Donald Trump to the White House this week.
Sure, the White House will tell you the president was merely respecting the traditions of a peaceful and smooth transition. Only a few weeks earlier, though, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre assured the press that Biden believed the Republican presidential candidate was a “fascist.” Indeed, two years before that, Biden stood in front of the crimson red background in Philadelphia and delivered what was perhaps the most divisive speech in modern presidential history, decrying the rise of “semi-fascism” on the Right.
So why was he smiling? You know why.
It’s not entirely implausible that the president was rooting for Trump to win in 2024. That would certainly put his decorators in their place. Indeed, after five decades of loyal service to his party, the man was discarded and treated like a child. It must have stung that his previous boss, former President Barack Obama, led the charge to replace him with his inept vice president. The indignity of having celebrities painting him as invalid in the New York Times must have been humiliating for Biden, who fashions himself one of the great statesmen in U.S. history.
Biden, a man of persistently modest talents, proved that with enough luck and time, anyone could be president.
He first lucked into a Washington job during the 1973 Senate race in Delaware. Former President Richard Nixon, then in the throes of Watergate, convinced his ally, incumbent J. Caleb Boggs, to hold off retirement and run again. This was the first Senate election in which 18-year-olds could vote, and Biden made the case that Boggs, 63, was too old for the job.
From that moment on, Biden’s oversized sense of importance and unearned confidence would be a fixture in U.S. political life. While many saw a boorish buffoon, Biden saw himself in the mold of former President John F. Kennedy. The Delaware senator was willing to prostrate himself to virtually anyone, including segregationists, to weasel his way into positions of power.
By 1987, Biden was ready to run for the presidency. The problem, as it turned out, was he ran as a high-achieving academic star and son of Welsh miners, which wasn’t actually his own life. The campaign was an ignominious failure.
Biden returned to his gaffe-filled, undistinguished senatorial career — perhaps most notable for destroying amity in Supreme Court judicial hearings. He ran again for the White House in 2008, winning 0% of the delegates.
After two catastrophic presidential campaigns under his belt, though, Biden was saved by Obama, who found him to be the most unctuous centrist in D.C. and made him his running mate. Nervous voters would soon realize Biden was an inveterate leftist, and Obama would later warn people not to “underestimate Joe’s ability to f–k things up.”
They always do.
After overcoming multiple humiliations, Hillary Clinton ran for president. That too must have been a tough pill to swallow.
In 2020, when Democrats faced the possibility of a Trotskyite Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) winning the nomination, they had little choice but to turn to another old white guy in the primaries.
Because of COVID-19 lockdowns, Biden could telecommute to his campaign. Predictably, his presidency was a string of policy disasters.
After degrading himself for 50 years just to win the White House, adopting and championing every harebrained nutty leftist along the way, Biden was rejected by his party. Vice President Kamala Harris didn’t even let Biden campaign. Not really.
It was then that Biden, a loudmouth jerk for most of his career, decided to show some gravitas. There was a hint of it when Harris was trying to gin up a fight with Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) over hurricane responses, and Biden praised the Florida governor for being “gracious” and “cooperative.” However, when Harris lost, Biden quickly invited Trump to town. The two posed for photos and spoke for a couple of hours. Later, Trump assured journalists that his team and the Biden White House enjoyed a “very, very good relationship.”
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Biden finally got to be the president he envisioned, and his enemies got what was coming to them.
It was the smile of a man at peace.
This article was originally published at www.washingtonexaminer.com
