President Biden’s incompetence has been plain to see by anyone willing to face the truth. But truth is not the Democrats’ strong suit. And his incompetence (think of it medically, not politically—he has been incompetent politically for decades) precluded him from doing even small things that might have helped him politically.
Now that he’s out, the elephant in the room has a sign around his neck that says “25th Amendment.” If he’s not competent to run for office, he’s not competent to do the job now.
And the Democrats’ pushing him out of the race, but not out of office, will reveal their cynical perfidy for all the world to see. They don’t care peanuts about the country; they care only about their power. That’s the real Biden scandal.
There was an obvious action Biden could have taken that might have demonstrated that he was still, perhaps, marginally competent: firing Kimberly Cheatle, the head of the Secret Service. The woman is clearly incompetent. Anyone—probably everyone—can see that. Why couldn’t the president? It is said she is a friend of Dr. Jill’s. Ah, cherchez la femme.
Biden could have said that it was his obligation to protect all Americans, even those running against him. Some people might have thought the action cynical, but at least it would have shown a president in action, taking charge, running the government, cracking the whip, keeping order—not just wandering around aimlessly eating ice cream cones and watching reruns in his mind of beating up Corn Pop.
Now there’ll be time enough for all that—assuming he still has the mental capability to expect anything.
Biden’s response to the assassination attempt was his second major public blunder. The withdrawal from Afghanistan was the first. Biden should have fired some generals after that debacle. But there was probably a problem then: the hasty, chaotic withdrawal was very likely planned and ordered by Biden, not the generals, and they would have spilled the beans if they had been blamed and fired.
But that was not the case with the head of the Secret Service. Even if she is a friend of Dr. Jill’s, how could she have been such a friend that she was being kept at the cost of Biden’s presidency? Nobody in Washington has that kind of two-legged friend.
The Secret Service is an agency in disarray, and it has been for at least a decade.
In 2015, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, led by Jason Chaffetz (R-UT), published a devastating report detailing the Secret Service’s ongoing staffing shortage, training deficiencies, low morale, and really inefficient procedures.
Some of the incidents in the report are shocking, even if they are still remembered by people who . . . remember such incidents.
On November 11, 2011, Oscar Ramiro Ortega-Hernandez fired multiple shots at the White House from a semiautomatic rifle. The Secret Service was not aware that at least seven bullets had hit the residence for several days.
In April 2012, several Secret Service agents and officers solicited prostitutes before a presidential visit to the Summit of the Americas in Cartagena, Colombia.
The Secret Service allowed an unvetted armed contract security guard to ride in an elevator with President Obama at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, Georgia. The guard also breached the president’s security formation and attempted to take pictures of the president at a departure tent.
On March 4, 2015, Secret Service senior supervisors Marc Connolly and George Ogilvie interfered with a crime scene involving a bomb threat just outside White House grounds. Connolly and Ogilvie were intoxicated at the time.
Chaffetz reported on the radio a few days ago that his committee also determined that some agents were sent into the field after a training period that lasted . . . thirty minutes! You can’t make this stuff up.
In a statement put out on the Monday after the assassination attempt on Trump, Director Kimberly Cheatle said (in part):
The Secret Service is tasked with the tremendous responsibility of protecting the current and former leaders of our democracy. It is a responsibility that I take incredibly seriously, and I am committed to fulfilling that mission.
Right.
Biden should have issued a statement saying:
The Secret Service is tasked with the tremendous responsibility of protecting—among other people—current, former, and potential future leaders of our democracy. It is a responsibility that I take incredibly seriously, and I am committed to fulfilling that mission.
The Service has been in turmoil since at least 2015—and, obviously, it still is. One decade is just not enough. One decade is far too long.
Because of the recent abject failure of the Service, I have fired the director. Clearly, new leadership is essential if the Service is to reform.
Surely a man who beat the rice out of Corn Pop could have managed to fire the head of the Secret Service.
Except . . . it turns out that Biden didn’t beat up Corn Pop. He apologized for insulting him and avoided the confrontation. Plus ça change. A harbinger of Afghanistan, et al.
And now he’s gone. The Supreme Court is safe—for now. And Biden won’t be missed. He will never be missed.
Daniel Oliver is Chairman of the Board of the Education and Research Institute and a Director of Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy in San Francisco. In addition to serving as Chairman of the Federal Trade Commission under President Reagan, he was Executive Editor and subsequently Chairman of the Board of William F. Buckley Jr.’s National Review.
Email Daniel Oliver at Daniel.Oliver@TheCandidAmerican.com.
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