A Not-So-Fond Farewell to Joe Biden – WSJ

Mr. Biden doesn t lie as often as Donald Trump, but his lies are grander. He claims to have inherited high inflation and worked sedulously to lower it. He claims to have enlarged and held the North Atlantic Treaty Organization together. He claims to have created millions of new jobs. None of these claims hold up under even cursory investigation.

He frequently recounts uninteresting advice his working-class father gave him. He never misses a chance to tell you that he lost his son Beau, who served in Iraq but didn t die there. No Irishman is ever taken in by Irish charm. If I am any measure, it doesn t work so well on Jews either.

So many of Mr. Biden s sentences begin with the word look. A great many others never find their ending. During speeches he is imprisoned by the teleprompter; interviews often find him clutching his notes. When he leans in to whisper what he takes to be crucial sentiments, as if speaking in italics, he doesn t deliver. He has managed to seem, somehow, fragile yet unsympathetic.

Democrats hold that Mr. Biden has forgone a second presidential term out of selflessness, on behalf of the American people, for the greater good of the country. Of late I have heard him referred to as lovable. Not a word about how he became rich while in political office, owning several costly homes, a Corvette and who knows how many other cars, nor of a son and brother, not to speak of grandchildren, who have also grown rich as his star ascended.

Many say Mr. Biden s term as president has been historic. And so, I suppose, it has been. His years in office saw the intrusion of woke culture, and with it the fall in prestige of American institutions of higher education. During the same years antisemitism found a home in the Democratic Party, where identity politics took a firm hold. All this while Mr. Biden pursued the electrification of our vehicles and was off chasing climate change.

If America is one day to have the equivalent of the Roman historians, our Suetonius is likely to emphasize Mr. Biden s plagiarism as well as the cocaine found in his White House. Our Tacitus may dwell on his contribution through ignorance to the decline of the American empire. As for me, I have come to view him as the Russian people were said to view the czar, that is, may he live and be well but not too close to me.

via www.wsj.com

Joseph Epstein.