Biden is right to be angry
Back in September, I argued that the Washington press corps is probably the president’s biggest challenge to getting reelected. Joe Biden needs voters to understand what he’s done to get the economy back on track after Donald Trump bungled the government’s response to the covid pandemic. That’s hard to do, however, when the people responsible for conveying that information see everything – and I mean everything – through the lens of winning and losing elections.
My argument feels timely again after a special counsel report was released Thursday. It found that Biden did nothing wrong with government secrets that had been discovered in an old office of his and in his house in Delaware. My argument feels timely again, not because that was the news, but because that wasn’t. Instead, the news was about what the special counsel’s thoughts of Biden’s memory. Here’s the AP’s headline: “Special counsel says Biden came across to investigators as ‘well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.’”
That might have been newsworthy if not for the fact that the special counsel, a Republican by the name of Robert Hur, was imagining in his report what a defense might look like to a jury. As one Twitter user said: “On a fundamental level, [the AP tweet] is literally factually false. He was speculating (editorializing) what defense he thought Biden might mount in court. Just another absolute media failure.”
I’ll let others discuss whether speculation is appropriate for a special counsel and whether the Justice Department, especially US Attorney General Merrick Garland, did the right thing in allowing the report to come to light as is. I think what’s important for normal people is recognizing that it is speculation and that the press corps is reporting that speculation as if it were not speculation but instead a neutral fact.
Also important is understanding that such speculation is only newsworthy in the sense that it plays into an already established narrative about the president’s advanced age, a narrative that was originated by a rightwing media apparatus that itself almost certainly influenced Special Prosecutor Hur’s decision to delve into what Lindsay Beyerstein called “theatrical speculation about what kind of defense the target might mount and how that might play with a jury.”
For Biden’s defenders, it’s tempting to dismiss the impact of the report, and the press corps’ reporting of it. USA Today’s Rex Huppke quipped: “The people who like President Joe Biden still like him and the people who hate President Joe Biden still hate him and all the other people were probably tuned out and living their lives today and will decide who to vote for a month or so before the election. The End.”
Would that were entirely true. Unfortunately, sabotage like this has worked before. Former FBI Director James Comey, also a Republican, couldn’t find anything criminal in Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server when she was secretary of state. But that didn’t stop him from “speculating (editorializing)” about how irresponsible she was, thus playing into an already established narrative, again that was originated by the rightwing media apparatus, about how trustworthy she was. Some say that tipped the 2016 election in Trump’s favor.
But there are differences. First, Biden is president. Clinton wasn’t. As such, he can point to his record of accomplishment. Indeed, during a press conference yesterday, he did just that. In effect, he asked, if my memory is so bad, how did I do everything that I have done so far without any of the anarchy and chaos of the previous presidency?
Michael Cohen, the MSNBC columnist, not Trump’s former attorney, echoed that: “On Biden's memory loss, where's the evidence that he’s screwing up his job? I'm being serious here: is there an argument that Biden is making mistakes? On Israel, immigration, Ukraine, the budget and debt limit? Seems like he's handled most of these pretty well.
Another difference is that Biden is angry. More to the point, our society tends to take a man’s anger seriously. (Clinton did not enjoy such benefit of the doubt.) Within hours of the report’s release, he called a presser to rebut its “theatrical speculation.” I’ll leave the substance of the rebuttal to others. For my purposes, what’s important is that he responded swiftly and angrily, leaving no doubt about his feelings. “There is even reference that I don't remember when my son died,” Biden said. “How in the hell dare he raise that? When I was asked the question, I thought to myself, it wasn’t any of their damn business.”
USA Today’s Rex Huppke is right to suggest that, like most things, the question of Biden’s memory will probably fall into partisan camps before it’s forgotten. That would be an acceptable outcome. But in order for that to happen, the president had to get in front of it. If he had left it alone, he would have risked allowing it to become a neutral fact, something above politics, thus potentially eroding his standing among people who think of themselves as above politics, that is, swing voters.
When asked if he can continue being president after being described as a “well-meaning, elderly man,” Biden replied with a perfect mix of humility and righteous anger. “I’m well-meaning and I’m an elderly man and I know what the hell I’m doing,” he said. “I’m president. I put this country back on its feet. I don’t need his recommendation.”
That the president was visibly angry at yesterday’s presser was taken by some as working against him. Because “he looked and sounded pissed off,” Chris Cillizza said, that “affirms how worried he (and they) are about the age and competency issue.” That’s what you can expect from a “savvy pundit” who has lost touch with all sense of morality.
Sadly, most of the rest of the Washington press corps is equally anti-moral. Reporters often refuse to come to moral conclusions even when the evidence points to one. In this case, the evidence is that the special counsel’s report was itself openly “speculating (editorializing),” not about law but appearances – politics. Legally, there was nothing. Politically, there was something! But reporters are refusing to say so.
Instead, they are playing along, because it serves their interests – getting as much attention as possible – to play along. The question is not whether the president is angry. The question is why. The special counsel didn’t have enough to indict him, only to smear him.
That would make anyone angry.
