“The World According to Joe Biden” is an interesting place. It’s full of unicorns and rainbows, cotton candy clouds, and magical gnomes who cause all kinds of mischief.
According to Biden, the gnomes have been busy. How else do you explain the worst inflation in 40 years or the baby formula crisis, or supply chain woes, or the other economic disasters that the president has visited upon us?
You explain it by blaming the American people. “People are really, really down,” Biden told the Associated Press in an interview on Thursday.
“Their need for mental health in America has skyrocketed because people have seen everything upset,” Biden said. “Everything they’ve counted on upset. But most of it’s the consequence of what happened, what happened as a consequence of the, the COVID crisis.”
Biden says America needs a mental health intervention. And he is dutifully following the first rule of politics: deny reality. Biden spoke of the warnings by some economists that a recession was on the way.
“First of all, it’s not inevitable,” he said. “Secondly, we’re in a stronger position than any nation in the world to overcome this inflation.”
As for the causes of inflation, Biden flashed some defensiveness on that count. “If it’s my fault, why is it the case in every other major industrial country in the world that inflation is higher? You ask yourself that? I’m not being a wise guy,” he said.
The president’s statement appeared to be about inflation rising worldwide, not necessarily whether countries had higher rates than the U.S. Annual inflation in Japan, for example, has risen in recent months though it’s still at a yearly rate of 2.4%, according to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development.
Biden said he was still optimistic about the economy, given the 3.6 percent unemployment rate. But with interest rates rising — the largest increase since 1994 — unemployment will once again become an issue, along with inflation, and tightening credit.
About the only thing that’s missing from the 1970s is “malaise.” Oh, wait.
Yet Biden’s remedy is not that different from the diagnosis made by former President Jimmy Carter in 1979, when the U.S. economy was crippled by stagflation. Carter said then the U.S. was suffering from a “crisis of confidence” and “the erosion of our confidence in the future is threatening to destroy the social and the political fabric of America.”
The president said he wants to endow the U.S. with more verve, fortitude and courage.
“Be confident,” Biden said. “Because I am confident. We’re better positioned than any country in the world to own the second quarter of the 21st century.”
Brave words. Empty words, but brave. Sometime in the next decade, China will surpass America as the number one economy in the world. And the Chinese government has a lot more confidence in their Communist system than Biden and his woke advisors have about American capitalism. If you’re looking for a reason for America’s decline, that’s a good place to start.
The similarities between Joe Biden and Jimmy Carter are eerie. Both men had no faith in the genius of America — its capitalists, its workers, or its ability to compete. The people aren’t inspired by leaders who whine about how unfair the criticism is, or how circumstances beyond the president’s control are the real cause of our problems.
For Carter, it was the Arab oil embargo that was the proximate cause of our economic woes. He, too, blamed the American people for not being inspired by his very existence. In a way, Biden and Carter are pathetic historical figures, lashed by forces they don’t understand. And like Carter, Biden will exit history in disgrace, leaving behind a prostrate nation needing to be inspired.
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