News   Dec 20, 2024
UrbanToronto Year-End Poll: Vote on the Best Buildings of 2024, presented by Sapphire Balconies
 3.6K     11 
News   Dec 20, 2024
UrbanToronto's Social Media Presence Skyrocketed in 2024
 1.3K     4 
News   Dec 20, 2024
Mattamy Homes Records A Year of Accomplishments
 2.1K     0 

President Joe Biden's United States of America

Admiral Beez said:
Even you are positing this in the past tense. The fact that Harris has raised a billion dollars and the race is still a tossup is worrying.
Click to expand...
Honestly, if that many Americans are stupid enough to get back on Trump's crazy train after having already gone there, then they deserve everything that's coming to them.
 
Towered said:
Honestly, if that many Americans are stupid enough to get back on Trump's crazy train after having already gone there, then they deserve everything that's coming to them.
Click to expand...
That's my thinking too. If they vote in Trump again I think I'm done with the USA. I just hope that Ottawa has second thoughts before grabbing another PRC traveler on Trump's behest.
 
Biden sounded far more energized and happy during his press conference than he ever did for months during his campaign.
 
Interesting story coming out of the late Biden regime where the ACLU asked for Biden to grant clemency to non-violent criminals that had been transferred from prison to house arrest under the CARES act…unfortunately the due diligence was lacking, and a mass clemency was rubber-stamped, leading to some pretty unsavory characters being granted perhaps an undeserved freedom. How about that!
 
Interesting article from the Wall Street Journal indicated that Biden's mental functions have not been good his entire presidency. Makes me wonder if Biden was really making many of his decisions during his presidency, and if some of the most spectacular failures during his presidency was a result of this.

How the White House Functioned With a Diminished Biden in Charge​

Aides kept meetings short and controlled access, top advisers acted as go-betweens and public interactions became more scripted. The administration denied Biden has declined.​

Dec. 19, 2024 5:00 am ET
Click to expand...
The small correction foreshadowed how Biden’s closest aides and advisers would manage the limitations of the oldest president in U.S. history during his four years in office.

To adapt the White House around the needs of a diminished leader, they told visitors to keep meetings focused. Interactions with senior Democratic lawmakers and some cabinet members—including powerful secretaries such as Defense’s Lloyd Austin and Treasury’s Janet Yellen—were infrequent or grew less frequent. Some legislative leaders had a hard time getting the president’s ear at key moments, including ahead of the U.S.’s disastrous pullout from Afghanistan.

Senior advisers were often put into roles that some administration officials and lawmakers thought Biden should occupy, with people such as National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, senior counselor Steve Ricchetti and National Economic Council head Lael Brainard and her predecessor frequently in the position of being go-betweens for the president.
Click to expand...
Presidents always have gatekeepers. But in Biden’s case, the walls around him were higher and the controls greater, according to Democratic lawmakers, donors and aides who worked for Biden and other administrations. There were limits over who Biden spoke with, limits on what they said to him and limits around the sources of information he consumed.
Click to expand...
Biden, now 82, has long operated with a tightknit inner circle of advisers. The protective culture inside the White House was intensified because Biden started his presidency at the height of the Covid pandemic. His staff took great care to prevent him from catching the virus by limiting in-person interactions with him. But the shell constructed for the pandemic was never fully taken down, and his advanced age hardened it.

The structure was also designed to prevent Biden, an undisciplined public speaker throughout his half-century political career, from making gaffes or missteps that could damage his image, create political headaches or upset the world order.

The system put Biden at an unusual remove from cabinet secretaries, the chairs of congressional committees and other high-ranking officials. It also insulated him from the scrutiny of the American public.
Click to expand...
The strategies to protect Biden largely worked—until June 27, when Biden stood on an Atlanta debate stage with Trump, searching for words and unable to complete his thoughts on live television. Much of the Democratic establishment had accepted the White House line that Biden was able to take the fight to Trump, even in the face of direct evidence to the contrary.

Biden, staffed with advisers since he became a senator at age 30, came to the White House with a small team of fiercely loyal, long-serving aides who knew him and Washington so well that they could be particularly effective proxies. They didn’t tolerate criticism of Biden’s performance or broader dissent within the Democratic Party, especially when it came to the president’s decision to run for a second term.

Yet a sign that the bruising presidential schedule needed to be adjusted for Biden’s advanced age had arisen early on—in just the first few months of his term. Administration officials noticed that the president became tired if meetings went long and would make mistakes.
Click to expand...
While it isn’t uncommon for politicians to want more time with the president than they get, some Democrats felt Biden was unusually hard to reach.

That’s what Rep. Adam Smith of Washington found when he tried to share his concerns with the president ahead of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021. Smith, a Democrat who then chaired the powerful House Armed Services Committee, was alarmed by what he viewed as overly optimistic comments from Biden as the administration assembled plans for the operation.

“I was begging them to set expectations low,” said Smith, who had worked extensively on the issue and harbored concerns about how the withdrawal might go. He sought to talk to Biden directly to share his insights about the region but couldn’t get on the phone with him, Smith said.
Click to expand...
One lawmaker who did get one-on-one time with Biden noticed that the president lacked stamina and heavily relied on his staff: Sen. Joe Manchin, the West Virginia Democrat-turned-independent who held up chunks of Biden’s legislative agenda during the first half of Biden’s term. Manchin said the job required a level of energy that he wasn’t sure Biden had been able to sustain.

“I just thought that maybe the president just lost that fight,” Manchin said in an interview. “The ability to continue to stay on, just grind it, grind it, grind it.”

Instead of Biden directing follow up, Manchin noticed that Biden’s staff played a much bigger role driving his agenda than he had experienced in other administrations. Manchin referred to them as the “eager beavers”—a group that included then-White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain. “They were going, ‘I’ll take care of that,’ ” Manchin said.
Click to expand...
 
You must log in or register to post here.

Back
Top