Commentary
WOULDN’T YOU THINK President Biden could walk into the Oval Office to meet and exchange pleasantries with Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar without having prepared cheat cards with the PM’s photo and a reproduction of the flag of Ireland imprinted at the top?
Yes, if he possessed the mental acuity we would normally expect of our president.
I would like to take this opportunity to wish all of my Irish readers Happy St. Patrick’s Day, and ask you to forgive our president for not having a better wish than the one he extended to Varadkar:
“May the hinge of our relationship never grow rusty.”
“PLEASE MADAME VICE PRESIDENT, do it for your country,” Washington Post columnist Kathleen Parker concluded her opinion piece Friday, in which she asked Vice President Harris to “step away from the ticket.”
A columnist for nearly four decades with right of center thinking, made a similar suggestion to Sarah Palin in 2008, who she believed to be “out of her league.”
“What ever the reason, it has seemed that Harris’s role was to be quiet, lest she embarrass her boss with her sometimes inane, rambling remarks and a laugh that erupts from nowhere about nothing obvious to others.
‘At the start of Biden’s term, I was pulling for Harris to do well. She had pizzaz and a reputation for being a tough prosecutor. She had moxie and swager, and she leaned centrist. There was reason for hope.
“Her performance as second in command has been disappointing, to say the least. Americans have taken note.”
Writing that Harris could provide her own reasons for moving on, Parker suggested that perhaps she and Biden could cut a deal for her to become attorney general if he was reelected. That’s a big “if.”
“But she won’t,” writes Joe Cunningham in Red State. “Harris has too high an opinion of herself,” despite her approval rating at just 37.2 percent, among the lowest recorded for a vice president.
ATTORNEY GENERAL Merrick Garland has been criticized frequently, primarily for heading up a Department of Justice that doesn’t dole out equal justice, especially when it come to the manner in which indictments of former President Trump are handled.
We learned, however, that it was Garland’s decision to release the Hur report with its portrayal of a confused and forgetful president that wasn’t mandatory. He was under no obligation to do so. He could have buried Hur’s findings, redacted them, or sent them back for edits. Incidentally, we now know that the White House requested edits.
STATE OF THE UNION comments about President Biden continue to linger in the media. I thought this letter to the editor of the Wall Street Journal was apropos:
“He seemed to be showing signs of sundowning, a condition elderly people experience at the end of the day when emotional control become difficult to maintain and anger flares. It’s a phenomenon familiar to those who care for the elderly.” – Stuart Creque, Moraga, California
The Moment You Started to Like Donald Trump
Reading that headline in American Thinker, my curiosity was drawn to read the piece by Stephan Helgesen, a retired career diplomat and prolific writer on politics. This a brief synopsis.
“Let’s be honest. You know you like Trump, even if you hate him. And I know the reason why,” he began, before laying it all out, reminding us that we were brought up to avoid people who exaggerated or stretched the truth … people who portrayed themselves as winners while denigrating others.
Our parents, teachers, Scoutmaster, and high school coaches all spoke of teamwork, and after graduation you read books on achieving success. It was Trump’s “Art of the Deal” that captured you. He was the personification of what successful Americans are all about over the years – bold, brash, full of bravado, fearless, driven, confident, risk takers and unapologetic for triumphs.
“You voted for him, or maybe you didn’t, but you at least admired his pluck,” he writes. “Then your peer group took over, and the shaming went into high gear. You wanted to stay out of the fight and not risk losing friends or family members to a political disagreement, you kept your mouth shut.”
But things changed. “You’ve manned up and vowed not to cower in fear every time somebody says, “Didn’t you vote for Trump?”
“You still think Trump should be more circumspect and choose his words more carefully, but you are also aware that in between his bouts of boastfulness and repetition, he is asking all of us to see what is right in front of our eyes and not be fooled by special interests, professional politicians, or even himself.
“Is Donald Trump the perfect leader, or was he the perfect president? Absolutely not, he wrote as he reminded us of pioneers and presidents who risked everything, even their lives to change history. “Were some of them outlandish for their times? Did some of their decisions create controversies that dogged them throughout their careers? The answer is ‘yes.’
“Over time, many of us find the courage to follow the truth about ourselves and our leaders.”
May God continue to bless the United States of America.
