THE BIDEN MALAISE

A conservative commentator lays into the current president with a familiar litany of complaints.

Strassel, author of The Intimidation Game: How the Left Is Silencing Free Speech, juxtaposes Jimmy Carter and Joe Biden, linking the two on the undeniably problematic issues of inflation and energy as well as foreign policy. According to the author, it was all Carter’s fault that the mullahs held the embassy staff in Tehran for so long (never mind the Reagan team’s back-channel deal to delay their release until after the election), just as “Biden’s reckless withdrawal from Afghanistan embarrassed our allies, abandoned Afghanis, and made the U.S. look weak” (never mind that Trump’s team negotiated that retreat). Furthermore, Biden exaggerated in the midterms when he “crisscrossed the country recalling the January 6 riot and insisting ‘democracy’ was on the ballot.” Strassel excoriates the supposedly radical-left administration now in the White House, contrasting Biden with the more centrist Carter crowd and drubbing both by comparison with her apparent hero, Ronald Reagan, who “didn’t lead with cultural issues.” It’s a relief when Strassel eventually finishes wailing away on liberals and gets to work on her own team, allowing that the midterm election didn’t quite work out the way the GOP wanted because voters preferred Democrats to “disfavored Republicans [who] had something in common: strong ties to Trump.” The author spends much of the latter part of the book conjuring up notions of a big-tent Republicanism that eschews Proud Boys–like militancy, at least in public, and instead urges that “if politicians want to see a change in the culture, they could start by acting like grown-ups.” Perhaps, for starters, by not insisting that “many of Biden’s people…were picked because they checked an identity-politics box.”

If “Let’s go, Brandon” is your idea of elevated political discourse, then this is your book.