Weekend at Sleepy Joe’s

Cockburn’s tongue-in-cheek (or is it?) piece today’s World section is worth a look.

He points out that the whereabouts of the leader of the free world, US president Joe Biden, have been elusive these past days. Biden, indeed, hadn’t been seen since Saturday, back in his home town in Delaware, playing golf and going to Mass like the good Catholic boy he is.

Indeed, it seems Biden spends more time in Wilmington than he does in the White House. The president clearly doesn’t like the mansion John Adams built, saying ‘it’s hard to get comfortable there’.

Ironic coming from a bloke who spent most of his adult life trying to live there.

Cockburn speculates that it could be that Biden needs his familiar surroundings to recharge, or even that he is trying to dodge that pesky Delta variant that is doing the rounds of Washington DC, a place that has recorded over 51,000 Covid infections and over 1,100 deaths – 15,000 more infections than whole of Australia.

But the bottom line is that President Biden is exactly as former President Trump ruthlessly caricatured him: Sleepy Joe. An old dodderer who would be better off in a nice warm retirement town enjoying a good book and a game of mah jongg.

He doesn’t out in a full week. He doesn’t do press conferences. He doesn’t make many public appearances. His best friend is a dog. His sentences are often incoherent. And his key minders presumably run the country.

White House chief-of-staff and long-time Biden retainer Ron Klain is probably the most powerful man in the world yet almost nobody knows who he is. He is the man who controls Biden’s day, determining who he sees and what he does. Klain also receives the same briefings as the president, and oversees every aspect of the presidential machinery. With Biden’s National Security Adviser, Jake Sullivan, and Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Klain must keep tabs on Biden’s heath, his mental powers and his stamina. Presumably, like JFK’s advisers did with Kennedy’s Addison’s Disease, they seek to keep anything concerning well away from the public.

But Klain, as Biden’s gatekeeper, has one vital role that matters to all of us. He must keep his boss going long enough to stop Vice-President Kamala Harris ever sitting behind the Resolute desk in the Oval Office.

It may well be that Biden spending every weekend in Delaware is a Weekend at Bernie’s Joe’s. But, if that is the price for keeping Sleepy Joe fresh enough to hold back a Harris presidency, it is a price worth paying.