Grading Joe

 

 

Welcome to a new feature of Humor Me!  Whenever you see the above picture, you know it will be an "opinion" piece. This means I am giving an "opinion" which may/may not be grounded in facts and logic. But, and here comes the tricky part, it is what I think. Your mileage may differ.

I put the above paragraph in because I will be grading the 46th President of The United States, Joseph "Joe" Biden.

I will admit I've been pretty tough on President Joe. But, you have got to understand something: I've been following him, on and off, since I was in eighth grade. In other words, I've been aware of Joe Biden as long as I've been aware of "Smoke On The Water." (Which I give an "A" for awesome guitar licks and "F" for lyrics.  "Swiss time was running out")

I have seen him at his worse: his take down of Judge Bork and the way he handled the Clarence Thomas nomination.  While he is not the cause of the toxicity around our public conversation, he's done his share of mess which causes those on the other side of the river (um, me) not to trust his claims of bipartisanship.

But people say he's a nice guy. I know Zell Miller loved him.

First of all, President Joe's grade is an "I" for incomplete. This is because he's only been in for a couple of months and has a couple of years to go. But here are some preliminary grades.

I would give him an "A" for lowering the temperature from the Trump era.  Every day was something with Trump: a tweet, someone fired, yelling at somebody.  It was just a circus every day.

A lot of it was Trump's fault. He is combative by nature, and he was used to getting his way. He always sounded like he was holding a "town hall" at one of his companies and he was taking away "causal Fridays" because the employees didn't meet their arbitrary goal.

Plus, plenty of people in the media at large saw Trump as an American Mussolini who must be stopped. Therefore, if Trump said the sky was blue, CNN would say the sky was red and have a panel of eight "experts" explaining why.

It's not that way now. The mainstream media got their orange whale and Joe's more in line with their thinking.

On messaging, I give Biden a "C-."   Even with all of the non-Fox news organizations and entertainment industry with him, I have found his message to be messy and garbled.

For example, Biden made wearing a mask a big deal.  He was even putting on two masks in a room where everyone was vaccinated.  Then, a couple of days later, it was okay to go nude face if you're vaccinated. Then he's in England, wearing the mask again and doing the elbow bump.

His administration made a big whoop-de-do about saving 16 cents at your Fourth of July picnic without mentioning you're paying almost a dollar more in gas. 

His speeches have been, at best, bland.  His whispering messages are just bizarre.  "Pay people more," he whispered a  few weeks ago, I guess, to small business owners who can't find enough help post-pandemic. But, of course, why didn't they think of that?  That brilliance only comes with being the President of The United States.

The cabinet gets a generous "B".  I don't agree with 95% of what comes out of the President's cabinet, but they are Democrats, and that's what you will get. In addition, you will get the goofball leftist statements like the condo collapse in Florida was due to "climate change".

Policy:  "D+".   I'm a semi-libertarian Republican conservative old man.  I'm not going to agree with the administration on a lot of things. The border is a mess, and it is pretty obvious the migrants saw Biden's election as an invitation to come on up.  Gas prices are up, and there's no indication he gives a flying flip.  The Middle East, OY! What can you say?   I'll give Biden credit for not being kissy-face with Putin, but he is scared of Xi Jinping.  Nobody knows how Biden will react if Xi invades Taiwan.  

On regular political stuff, I'll give Biden a "C".   I think I am right to be skeptical of his bipartisanship. He seems to be very concerned with his progressive flank instead of the more moderate parts of his party and country.  While I think he went overboard with the masks, overall he did a good job with keeping the focus on getting the vaccine.  I think it is interesting that one of the first things Mr. Union Label did in office was kill the Keystone pipeline which killed union jobs. 

One the elephant in the room, Team Biden seems like they are managing Joe pretty well.  He hasn't wandered away from The White House. (That we know of.)  However, he has wandered from the script  that would have sent up flares in the Reagan administration. ("I have never been particularly poor at calculating how to get things done in the United States Senate. So the best way to get something done, if you, if you hold near and dear to you that you like to be able to, anyway,”)   So, it is going to be interesting to see how well he holds up doing the coming years.  I'm still betting he won't run for re-election.