President Donald Trump has been inaugurated. I didn’t watch the inauguration, but I don’t watch any political speeches. They’re all just flannel. Well, truth be told, I did see a little bit of it. Thing ran over into the news slot as if it was something important like a football game. Trump was signing Executive Orders with a Sharpie. Here we have a lesson. If you ever see a president signing laws or Executive Orders, he’s doing it at his desk in the West Wing; then he hands the pens to the well-dressed (but not too well because we wouldn’t want to lose the common touch) politicians and dignitaries who have been invited into the presidential sanctum. Trump diverged from traditional practice.[1] He signed on the little stage in the Capitol, in front of an audience of his supporters. Then he tossed the collection of pens into the crowd one by one. Ordinary Americans (well, OK, “Trump supporters”), not a bunch of inside-the-Beltway lifers, got the souvenir pens. Symbolic.
President Joe Biden went off into a dignified retirement after attending the inauguration. Examining the entrails of the Democrats’ November 2024 disaster, some reporters tried an early assessment of the 46th President. He ran in 2020 and again in 2024 to prevent Donald Trump from having a second term. Succeeded the first time, then failed the second time said one. He committed one long series of unforced errors, said another. There was the retreat from Afghanistan; there was the border crisis; and there was the decision to run for re-election. That list isn’t long enough, claimed two others. Biden promised, and then failed, to govern as a centrist and healer of a divided nation. In office, he veered hard left with inflationary financing of an expansive legislative program, an open border, sponsorship of D.I.E. policies, and characterizing Republicans as “semi-fascist.”[2]
Others sprang to Biden’s defense. According to one, Biden made Covid vaccination widely available; he gave Ukraine enough arms and aid to “fight invading Russian troops to a stalemate”; and he spent $1.9 billion of new money on his favored projects. He just had a messaging problem, said another. Voter will be sorry they voted for Trump predicted a third.[3]
Biden’s reputation will be harmed by revelations of how his confidants managed his decline to deceive the public.[4] Right at the moment, ordinary Americans take a dim view of Biden. A recent Gallup poll reported that more than half (54 percent) of respondents think that Biden will go down in history as a below-average or poor president; 26 percent see him as average; 19 percent believe that he will be seen as above average or outstanding.[5]
So, “Let the Games of the Forty-Seventh Presidency Begin.”
[1] Doubtless once again bursting through “the guardrails of our democracy.” The NYT is a HOA, as well as other, more admirable things. Dwight Manfredi vs. HOA 🫣 Tulsa King (Season 2)
[2] The writers are Matt Lewis in The Hill, Anthony Zurcher in BBC News, Bret Stephens in the NYT, and Ruy Texeira in The Free Press. All cited in “President Biden: How will history judge his legacy?” The Week, 24 January 2025, p. 6.
[3] Eugene Robinson in the Washington Post; Peter Coy in NYT; and Doyle McManus in Los Angeles Times. All cited in “President Biden: How will history judge his legacy?” The Week, 24 January 2025, p. 6.
[4] See: How the White House Functioned With a Diminished Biden in Charge – WSJ; How Biden’s Inner Circle Worked to Keep Signs of Aging Under Wraps – WSJ
[5] “Poll Watch,” The Week, 17 January 2025, p. 17.
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