By Michael Goodwin | New York Post
Breaking News Alert: Joe Biden to resign so Kamala Harris can become first female president.
OK, it hasn’t happened yet, but don’t be shocked if the president makes the dramatic move to improve his awful legacy.
He’s already using every trick in the book to try to wipe away the Big Stink from his tenure, but nothing is working.
Following the election, Biden has spent two months trying to get people to forget the last four years.
The effort hit a cringe-inducing low this week when he awarded prestigious civilian medals to the undeserving likes of Liz Cheney, Hillary Clinton, George Soros and a list of left-leaning celebrities.
The one consistency is that they all supported him. Instead of medals, they ought to get free psychiatric care.
In the real world, Biden leaves office in utter disgrace.
Beyond his disastrous policies on the economy and the border, he corrupted the Justice Department to go after Donald Trump and was able to keep his job for four years only because the White House, aided and abetted by a partisan press corps, engaged in a massive coverup of his frightening cognitive decline.
The debate disaster
The ruse, which included administration lies and social-media censorship, worked well enough until the June debate with Trump, where Biden stumbled, mumbled and looked like a ghost.
He was so obviously unfit to be commander in chief for another four years that top Dems and their donors pulled the plug on his candidacy.
His presidency might have ended then, too, but that would have meant making Harris president, which nobody thought was a good idea on the merits.
Besides, Biden would have resisted being shoved out the door and a party civil war would have handed the election to Trump.
That was the eventual outcome anyway when Harris flopped as the substitute candidate, so Biden and his media handmaidens are now reduced to the political equivalent of trying to put lipstick on a pig.
It’s mission impossible.
That’s how bad the last four years have been.
Take the pardon of his felonious son Hunter.
After breaking his repeated promise that he would never pardon him, Biden gave his son immunity for any and all crimes that stretched back a full decade.
The only possible explanations for the unusually-large range are that the son committed crimes prosecutors didn’t know about and that some of those crimes involved Biden himself.
Instead of explaining the range, Biden said nothing and shifted the focus to other criminals by commuting the sentences of 37 of the 40 federal prisoners on death row.
They are the worst of the worst — homicidal maniacs, some of them child killers.
No problem — Trump vowed to start executions, so Biden used the commutation power for a display of moral preening over his objection to the death penalty.
That’s just one of many incidents where he is giving voters the middle finger.
Other actions include his effort to impose a ban on drilling oil and gas wells in federal waters in both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.
And following an election where Trump’s promise of sealing the border and deporting alien criminals was a difference maker, Biden changed visa programs so more foreign workers can come to America.
Last-minute legislation
He also agreed to sweetheart protections for union workers at the Social Security Administration, a clear bid to undercut Trump’s push to slash federal spending.
Remind me again, who is a threat to democracy?
Biden is also aiming to thwart his successor’s energy policies by sharply reducing emission levels in future years and making it harder for American companies to export liquid natural gas.
As Jim Geraghty of National Review put it, Biden’s vast push to tie Trump’s hands “makes Bill Clinton’s staffers stealing all the Ws from the White House keyboards look quaint.”
Boondoggles and political paybacks are almost certainly involved in Biden’s rushing billions of dollars out the door for what The Wall Street Journal calls “favored” environmental projects.
Although elevating Harris by playing the race and gender card would be a cheap trick, it would certainly bring Biden applause from far-left, Trump-hating historians who are the target audience for many of his final moves.
He’s looking for them to shape a positive narrative about his presidency and his lifetime in Washington.
Recall that he took office by meeting with a group of them, including Jon Meacham, who was writing speeches for Biden while also praising him on MSNBC without disclosing his dual role.
A main takeaway from the March 2021 White House gathering was a group-think idea that Biden had to “go big” and be the second coming of FDR.
It was a silly, pretentious idea, borne more of the animus the historians and Biden shared toward Trump and his supporters than of any real national need.
Household income already was increasing and the recovering COVID-era economy bore no resemblance to the depths of the Great Depression that confronted Franklin Delano Roosevelt when he took office in 1933.
But Biden’s vanity led him to seize the idea and push through trillions of spending under the banner of a Green New Deal.
Not surprisingly, much of the money was wasted, drove up the national debt and fueled the highest inflation in decades.
A 2023 study by a Republican House committee a year after the Dem-controlled congress passed the Inflation Reduction Act found that it did exactly the opposite of what was promised.
Nation under inflation
Inflation was up more than 15%, with grocery prices higher by 20% and gas prices by 62%.
The justifiable result was that, instead of the public acclaim Biden wanted, he got some of the lowest approval ratings on the economy of any modern president.
And a one-way ticket back to Delaware.
A report that he’s been saying privately he would have beaten Trump had he stayed in the race shows how out of touch he still is.
Biden was headed for a blowout defeat, probably by a margin larger than Trump’s landslide win over Harris.
Oddly, Jimmy Carter’s death adds some insight on Biden’s quest for a positive legacy.
Both Dems had such poor performances at home and on the world stage that voters turned the White House over to their Republican opponents after a single term.
That hasn’t stopped some Carter dead enders from trying to find success among the rubble, Biden among them.
He was alone among recent presidents who stayed close to Carter and spoke highly of his time in office.
The president’s effusive outpouring now suggests that concerns about his own legacy are overlapping with his handling of Carter’s death.
He has ordered an elaborate state funeral, complete with Carter’s remains lying in state and a government shut down for a national day of mourning.
When Biden eulogizes the former president on Thursday, don’t be surprised if his words reflect how he himself hopes to be remembered.
