Lord of the White House?
The evidence is scant that Joe Biden is "in charge" of his Administration. Who is?
Fans of the legendary British writer J.R.R. Tolkien will recognize the name Grima Wormtongue.
To know that, you don’t have to read Tolkien’s great “Lord of the Rings” trilogy (five stories). Watching the award-winning second movie, “The Two Towers,” in Peter Jackson's brilliant three-part adaptation will do. A second-tier antagonist, He was the malevolent “chief advisor” to King Theoden of Rohan, planted there by the evil wizard Saruman. He cast an evil spell over Theoden and impeded him through subtle, poisonous potions. One of our chief protagonists, the wizard Gandalf, finally breaks the spell, and Wormtongue chooses exile and eventually dies after he takes Saurman’s life. Classic.
How many of you believe that Joe Biden is truly “in charge” of his presidency, arriving early in the morning for meetings with his Chief of Staff to outline the day, make policy decisions, and dictate matters as our head of state?
Me neither.
Say what you will about Donald Trump - I’m no “never” nor “always Trumper” - but there was no doubt who ran that White House and made final decisions, whether you liked his “style” or not. The same cannot be said for the diffident Barack Obama, but George W. Bush was never the puppet under the control of Vice President Dick Cheney that leftists portrayed him. Most recent Presidents at least set a strong tone (Reagan). Some even micromanaged protest permits on Lafayette Square in front of the White House (Carter).
Biden? He might shuffle into the Oval Office by 9 a.m., likely later, if at all. The media has stopped publishing his non-existent schedule. He’s spent nearly 40 percent of his presidency at his beach house in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware - almost a full year of his presidency. Name the last time he held a live White House press conference or conducted a real interview with a serious, unbiased journalist. CNN “town halls” do NOT count, and I shouldn’t have to explain why, especially if you’ve watched one.
Biden is a cipher and an impaired one at that. The question is, whose cipher is he?
Fair question. Let’s tee up our candidates and ask for your vote.
Ron Klain
I actually know the President’s first chief of staff. He was Vice President Al Gore’s Senate Chief of Staff when I was Secretary of the Senate. He worked for Biden earlier in his 36-year Senate career. He and Biden have a close relationship.
We met once. He would serve as Gore’s 2000 campaign manager and post-election architect. Highly competent, he’s highly regarded for his political instincts and strategic smarts. Deservedly so.
Radio talker Hugh Hewitt often referred to him as the “deputy president” during his tenure. Few doubted that Klain ran the show while he was in the White House, but he’s been gone since January. Is he still pulling strings from outside?
Jeff Zeints
He’s the new Chief of Staff who replaced Klain. He’s been in the job for six months and previously served as Biden’s “Covid_19 coordinator.” He served as acting director of the Office of Management and Budget during the latter Obama Administration years. He has no practical political or notable policy experience but is highly regarded for making the trains run on time . . . wherever they may be headed. Unlikely that he’s Grima.
Susan Rice
Rice, who served as Obama’s National Security Advisor and Ambassador to the United Nations, took on a very different role when Biden assumed office: Chief Domestic Policy Advisor. Her connections and attachment to Barack Obama and his political svengali, Valerie Jarrett, who has been running the Obama Foundation since 2021. Rice stepped down in late April following a New York Times report about a rise in forced migrant child labor during the Biden Administration.
Announcing her departure, Biden’s praised her for her work on immigration (!!) and health care. When she was first hired, former Trump acting Director of National Intelligence and ex-US Ambassador to Germany Ric Grennell said she would be “the shadow president.”
Great job on immigration issues, madam Ambassador. It depends on what you were trying to “immigrate” to the US, for whom, and for what purpose. The movie “Sound of Freedom” may provide clues.
Tom Friedman
The author and New York Times columnist that hasn’t written anything notable since his seminal work, The World is Flat: A Brief History of the 21st Century (2005), calls himself a “free trader” who was a strong advocate for the invasion of Iraq. He also openly supported Hillary Clinton’s, Michael Bloomberg’s, and Joe Biden’s presidential campaigns. He’s praised China’s “autocracy,” so there’s that.
He clearly has a close relationship with the Biden White House and no doubt influenced their recent highly inappropriate engagement in Israel’s internal affairs as the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, was poised to pass judicial reforms. Most of what you’ve read in the press is wrong, and Friedman is no different. In his column, “Only Biden Can Save Israel Now” (queue laugh track), he called on Biden to step in and pull Israel back from the brink of what most accurately informed Americans would consider sensible reforms. Biden did as Friedman told him, fortunately, to no avail. Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu and his coalition wisely ignored him.
But clearly, the three-time Pulitzer Prize winner has outsized influence with his turgid publication’s readers in the Biden White House (shudder). Still, it is unlikely that a New York Times columnist is pulling Biden’s puppet strings on other than an issue or two.
Jill Biden
Make that Dr. Jill Biden, the spouse of the infirm President.
There is no doubt that she has outsized influence over her spouse, not unlike Edith Wilson when President Woodrow Wilson suffered a stroke during his second term as President. I doubt Dr. Jill is signing (forging) presidential documents the way Mrs. Wilson did, but she is never more than a step or two away from Biden, except when he’s embarrassing himself on the international stage.
Dr. Jill wasn’t around to help Joe this time, but fortunately, King Charles appears to have been briefed in advance of the President’s proclivities to wander. But when she is nearby, she’s there to protect him. I’ve never seen a presidential spouse do this, ever.
The White House Easter Bunny
Don’t laugh. When the President began to take questions at a recent annual White House Easter Egg Roll, a communications staffer, identified as Angela Perez, dressed as the Easter Bunny, stepped in to artfully, if comically, direct the President away from the media. It would probably insult the real Easter Bunny to associate Biden's economic and other domestic policies, from abortion tourism with your tax dollars at the Department of Defense in clear violation of federal law to our open southern border with him/her/xe/xer, but we’ll have to ask.
Barack Obama
Do the 44th and 46th Presidents talk and consult frequently? People Magazine:
President Joe Biden and former President Barack Obama keep in touch and talk regularly over the phone, the White House's top spokesperson told reporters on Monday.
Obama, 59, and Biden, 78, spent eight years together in the White House from 2009 to 2017, when Obama was president and Biden was his vice president.
Now that the latter has taken over as the country's commander-in-chief, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said the two Democratic leaders still "consult and talk about a range of issues" over the phone.
"They were not just the president and vice president," Psaki, 42, said during Monday's press briefing. "They are friends."
And, she added, "I would expect that continues through the course of President Biden's presidency."
That would explain a lot, especially since the Biden-Harris Administration is swarming with former Obama staff, and their policies are remarkably similar.
The sad thing is that while King Theoden was eventually sprung from his spell by Gandalf the Great, there’s no rescuing Joe Biden from his infirmity. Every day is his best day as we advance. A poll:
Highly recommended reading (and the correct answer): “The Obama Factor,” Tablet, by David Samuels.
I would have guessed Ron Klein, but he has been gone quite a while now.