OPINION:
President Biden governs by political tropisms — not great vision. That was on full display at the State of the Union address last week. He hit the right buttons — waxing about first-year accomplishments and plans to address challenges ahead — but too much said was vapid virtue signaling.
It’s not at all clear that America’s pre-Biden governing class was racist or sexist, but relying on iron-maiden diversity rules, Mr. Biden has chosen a photogenic, bland, unimaginative cast of top officials who either let fester or exacerbate the problems the nation faces.
America’s hard left — like the hard right — is fundamentally protectionist and isolationist. Mr. Biden lauded Buy America, because, to unions and other progressives, free trade is the devil’s work. The military is for parade grounds and pork barrel, not the defense of liberty — his team dismissed a U.S.-enforced no-fly zone over Ukraine for fear of the Russians.
The administration lacks a coherent strategy as Beijing threatens Taiwan with escalated military operations, brazenly ignores commitments negotiated with former President Donald Trump to purchase more American goods, and builds hypersonic, anti-satellite and cyber weapons. Those could take out the Golden Gate Bridge, disable the navigation of the U.S. fleet during a Pacific conflict and wreak havoc on the American power grid.
The Afghanistan debacle was manufactured in the West Wing. Secretaries Antony Blinken and Lloyd Austin received CIA warnings that the Afghan military would collapse, but Mr. Biden and his young royals were too focused on the politics of getting out all 2500 troops by the 20th Anniversary of the 9/11 attack and the consequences be damned.
All that emboldened Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Sanctions and diplomacy may resolve the Ukrainian crisis with an agreement on continental security, but then Mr. Putin wins. Germany and France would block further NATO expansion and thin allied troop levels would leave Eastern Europe vulnerable to his next imperialist whim.
China has stepped up to buy more Russian natural gas and wheat because the latter’s aggression distracts American resources from Beijing’s mischief in the Pacific. President Xi Jinping wins with a stalemate or Russian victory.
Mr. Biden lauded Ukrainian valor but offered nothing on these challenges.
Domestically, Mr. Biden bet on COVID-19 vaccines to enable a great reopening but was derailed by the delta and omicron variants. He clings to the left’s prejudice that government dictates — often based on shifting and uncertain science — always makes things better.
It’s time to take off the masks but keep them handy. A new variant could be more deadly than delta and contagious than omicron, but we didn’t hear plans to keep the economy open and more resilient in his State of the Union.
Crime rages in American cities that are captive to social justice governors, mayors and prosecutors, but Mr. Biden won’t challenge the hard left theology that it’s all systemic racism and modern police practices are no answer. Instead of combatting this lunacy, Mr. Biden focuses the Justice Department on congressional gerrymandering in red states like Texas but not in blue ones like New York.
His nominee to the Supreme Court, Ketanji Brown Jackson, radically adheres to the progressive catechism.
He boasts that the American Recovery Act and the Investment and Infrastructure Act will create growth and jobs. Although runaway inflation and falling real wages for ordinary workers have been instigated by pandemic supply chain problems, those were greatly amplified by Mr. Biden’s overspending and printing press monetary policy.
Now he wants to pack the Federal Reserve with new governors who pass the diversity test — one, Sarah Bloom Raskin, is overtly corrupt. Together, they will further shift monetary policy toward stoking inflation, curtail domestic energy production and promote social justice through the allocation of bank credit.
Meanwhile, investment bankers and private equity and high tech executives get unconscionably richer, while the ordinary working folks, who the Democrats’ progressive policies are supposed to help — Blacks, Hispanics and working-class — fall behind.
Last month in recall elections, three progressive members of the San Francisco school board managed barely 25% of the vote in a jurisdiction Mr. Biden carried with 85% against Mr. Trump. They pandered to unions and focused on renaming schools and destroying artwork to uphold critical race theory when parents were rightly concerned about the destructive consequences of extended school closures on their children’s long-term development.
On all these issues, Mr. Biden’s State of the Union address offered actions that repeat past mistakes or ignored them altogether.
Unrepentant, Mr. Biden continues to preach the socialist and diversity-obsessed theology of the left, but voters — including Blacks and Hispanics — are growing weary of religion without rice. They will humiliate Mr. Biden and his Democrats’ false piety in the midterm elections.
• Peter Morici is an economist, emeritus business professor at the University of Maryland and national columnist.
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