Trumpers saying that the Biden administration is chaotic, undisciplined and out of control is the kind of thing that costs me my sleep at night. It would be one thing if they tried to spread this Orwellian delusion and nobody believed it. But Republicans are buying it and now we have the news media acting as though it’s a reasonable interpretation of events.
It’s ridiculous:
President Biden’s administration by the middle of last week was confronted with images of long lines at gas pumps. The Middle East had erupted in violence. Headlines were warning that fears of inflation could threaten a fragile economy.
“Don’t panic,” Biden urged on Thursday afternoon. He meant it as a plea to drivers worried about filling their tanks, but it captured his message on the flurry of crises he is suddenly facing.
A president who prides himself on choreography and planning has seen in recent days a burst of unexpected events that showcase the need for political agility. The White House is approaching the problems — all politically sensitive — with a degree of calm and caution, even as some allies want Biden to be more forceful before events spiral further.
As Biden and his aides seek to project steadiness, many Republicans are offering an alternative interpretation: The world is increasingly engulfed in chaos on Biden’s watch as gas prices surge, crime rates rise, border crossings grow and the costs of consumer goods threaten to spike.
The dueling political messages have created a Rorschach test for voters in upcoming elections: Do they see Biden as an agent of competence or chaos?
Biden’s aides do not deny the problems cropping up on his watch, but they say his response demonstrates his effective leadership and his ability to marshal resources, summon experts and tackle multiple crises.
“If the start of the week was supposed chaos, look where the week ended up,” said Kate Bedingfield, the White House communications director. “By the end of the week, he’s saying the pipeline is online and gas is going to be back up to capacity soon, and we’ve gotten so many vaccines in arms that you don’t have to wear a mask in most instances anymore.”
“We’re not interested in a debate about competency versus chaos,” she added of the Republican criticism. “President Biden is doing the work, and the American people can judge for themselves.”
But it’s clear that in many ways, recent days have presented new tests for a young White House.
What bullshit. The gas lines were driven by morons with too much time on their hands, the Middle East erupts with regularity and it’s a normal part of any presidency to deal with it and the inflation paroxysm in the press was wildly overblown and, at the very least, premature.
The right is pumping this up because it tracks with their portrayal of Biden as a feeble old man who can hardly stay awake over his breakfast. Meanwhile, the NY Times published a long profile of Biden and the White House, clearly intended to show him as a demanding, short-tempered martinet who demands vast amounts of detail from his underlings and puts them through their paces as he deliberates over his decisions.
How those two pictures are supposed to be of the same man, I don’t know. If the wingnuts read the latter they would certainly be confused. But, of course, they will only see the distorted picture the right wing presents. I do wonder why they think they can persuade people that their lives are demonstrably worse off after the last year of hell we’ve all been through but as we know, those Trump cultists will believe anything so it doesn’t take much.
Needless to say, the whole point of this is to reach some people in the middle and convince them that the country is coming apart at the seams because of Sleepy Joe Biden. I’m not entirely sure it won’t work — many Americans have become addicted to grievance — but so far it isn’t happening. Biden’s approval rating is hanging tough in at the low 50’s while his disapproval is somewhere in the low 40s.