The imaginary Biden versus the real one: Mona Charen’s dilemma
Erstwhile conservative columnist Mona Charen is struggling to retain the image of the Biden she wishes existed. Her piece in Time is called, “We Elected Biden to Be Better Than This,” and it begins this way:
In 2020, America elected Joe Biden to be not-Trump—a role for which he seemed well-suited.
And yet “not-Trump” is not a government position, as far as I know. “President” is, and little in Biden’s history (including his stint as Obama’s VP) indicated he was well-suited for that role. And I say that as a person who was a Democrat for much of Joe Biden’s political life, and yet there was no point even back then when I would have considered him a decent candidate for the presidency, much less a good one. He was always a mendacious mediocrity at best.
Charen continues:
In 2016, the country voted for burn-it-all-down upheaval.
No; in 2016 the country voted to make American great again. And Trump just might have done it, given half a chance. But “burn it all down upheaval” is what the left has given us, in a particularly graphic manner in the post-Floyd riots. And even before he was elected, Biden made it clear that he was now a man of the left or at least a servant of the left.
Back to Charen again:
Trump was the tribune of those who felt betrayed and misled and mistreated.
True of some, but not of all of those who voted for him.
…Four chaotic years later, alarmed voters fled into the arms of an aging former vice-president and senator—a man they had twice rejected as a presidential contender—who seemed the personification of the steady hand.
That may be the most interesting sentence of Charen’s essay. The chaos of those four years was hardly Trump’s fault, unless you call mean tweets “chaos.” The chaos was the result of the all-out war against him. But yes, many “alarmed voters” – whipped into a frenzy of anti-Trump mania by the press and the Democrats and the NeverTrumpers, among whom Charen, as policy editor of The Bulwark, must be counted – did indeed vote for Biden for president. But “the personification of the steady hand”? Tell me another one. That was always a fable, and an obvious one at that.
This next paragraph is a marvel of self-delusion, if in fact it is what Charen actually believes:
No one expected Biden to be transformational or extraordinary, but we did need him to be the anti-Trump in the most important ways. We needed him to be sober and responsible, to play by the rules, and to uphold the primacy of law and procedure. And he delivered. President Biden freed the country and the world from the tyranny of tweeted insults, conspiracies, threats, lies, fantasies, and reversals. And while naturally some will criticize his policies, Biden has conducted the presidency with dignity. He has gone some way toward restoring a sense that the system, whatever its flaws, is basically sound.
What strange fantasy world does Charen inhabit? Of course, it may be that she’s lying through her teeth and doesn’t believe a word of what she’s writing. But that’s not the impression I get. I think that this is the Biden she hoped existed, and she hoped it so strongly and detested Trump so profoundly that she saw Biden with proverbial rose-colored glasses. That she is a long-time supposedly conservative commentator may have made her need for self-delusion greater rather than less. If Trump was unacceptable to Charen’s sense of propriety, or to her snobbery, or to whatever it is that motivates the NeverTrumper, then Biden must be the un-Trump because he was the only alternative that ultimately presented itself.
But the revelations of classified documents stored in Biden’s garage along with his Corvette seem to Charen to be too too Trumpish to justify. Her dream-Biden has come tumbling down, confronted by a reality that for some reason Charen is finally unable to completely deny. So Charen admits, “Biden really did do something similar.”
But Charen can’t just rest there; she has to backtrack with this:
The TV analysts who are rushing to explain that what Trump did was orders of magnitude worse than what Biden did are correct, but it will not alter the political calculus.
I’ll just mention a few more highlights (lowlights?) of her essay [my emphasis]:
The great loss here is not that this makes it more challenging to bring criminal charges against Trump for his contempt of the law regarding classified materials, the tragedy is that this is a victory for the kind of cynicism that Trump has popularized. “Drain the swamp.” “Lock Her Up.” “Stop the Steal.” “Defund the FBI.” Trump’s message has been consistent. Everyone is corrupt. The system is rigged. No one is honest. No one really plays by the rules.
Until now, it seemed that President Biden was defying that theme. His administration has been staffed by grown ups. There have been no scandals. The Department of Justice has been methodical and fair in its prosecutions.
How could anyone have been following Biden for the last fifty years – or really, any fraction of that time – and write those words with a straight face? In particular, the “staffed by grown ups” part? And yet there it is – followed by an assertion about the fairness of the DOJ.
Why do I bother with Charen’s essay? I do it because I continue to be fascinated with how people perceive reality, and the process by which they either finally change their minds when faced with something that strongly challenges those perceptions, or they rationalize their reluctance to do so and retain their former beliefs. Charen seems poised on some sort of seesaw that remains weighted more heavily on the “Biden is a good guy” side but is starting to tip.
But Charen made her anti-Trump choice in 2016, and unlike many others she’s never wavered in that choice. By 2020, she had to make believe that Biden was a person he is not, never was, and never will be. So for now I guess she’s stuck with it.
My hypothesis was always that Mona was hopelessly in love with Bill Kristol and would follow him anywhere.
So many of those who were built up to be the “Anti-Trump” turned out to be quite disreputable in their own ways: Biden, Fauci, Cuomo, Pelosi, Newsom. There’s also long been this tendency to view candidates as the opposite of what their opponent or predecessor has been. It distorts people’s judgement, first by blinding supporters to their candidate’s own faults, and second by blinding supporters to the similarities between the candidates.
So Bush had to be the Anti-Gore (and Gore the Anti-Bush), even though the two politicians’ kids had much in common. Obama got more credit as a thoughtful intellectual than he deserved because he was seen as the Anti-Bush. He was also the anti-McCain, better behaved and less volatile than his opponent. Hillary Clinton tried to win as the Anti-Trump, experienced and responsible, but Trump convinced enough people that he was the Anti-Clinton, that is to say, an outsider and not corrupted by the system.
So yes, Biden had to be seen as a man of truth and integrity, compassionate and competent, because his supporters had already convinced themselves that Trump was the opposite of all those things. Biden had official Washington’s seal of approval. Those who believed that Washington DC was as honest and competent as it believed itself to be took that endorsement at face value and didn’t think that the fact that the DC Establishment was so comfortable with Joe Biden didn’t say anything good about either the Establishment or Joe.
Mona has tied her identity to a vision of Trump that requires that any person apposing him will automatically become a paragon of virtues.
Never Trumpers—Are they evil or mentally ill, or both?
My vote is for mentally ill, specifically, delusional.
What a bizarre fantasy life this woman leads.
It’s as if she’s intentionally twisted and perverted—jettisoned?—all her powers of observation, logic, rationality.
Willingly. Ecstatically.
She is GIGO personified.
Except that the G is, for her, pure Gold—just what the doctor ordered, just what the country needed—until she could maintain that fantasy no longer, in spite of all her delirious efforts.
No wonder she feels adrift. Uncertain. Bereft. Betrayed….
Fearful that the Devil has been let off the hook by her Great Man’s pitiful negligence.
Still, I’m not convinced. One should expect that she’ll run back to her Manichaean cult as soon as she can, that is, if the cult will take her.
After all, the DEVIL is still out there…with all his myriads of horned supporters…ready to pounce, to destroy the country her Great Man is so sedulously, so tirelessly, so emphatically trying to save…and preserve.
She is delusional, but a lot of what she says I hear from my D/lib/left friends. So, like we all have noted before, up to 50% of the country is also delusional.
The line that gives it away is “There have been no scandals.” There have been PLENTY of scandals under Biden, from the Afghanistan withdrawal debacle to the torrent of lies that included the public defaming of U.S. border patrol agents for “whipping” illegal immigrants. For Charen to bluntly state otherwise is an indication of profound detachment from reality.
Mike
They have lied for so long or at least clung to an imaginary worldview for so long that the rose-coloured glasses are sealed on tight. There are none so blind as those who will not see.
“Four chaotic years later, alarmed voters fled into the arms of an aging former vice-president and senator—”
Alright, she had to be laughing, or stoned, or both when she wrote that.
“There have been no scandals”…
Yeah, I noticed that too. (Though could it be that she really meant to say, “Not a week has gone by that there hasn’t been a scandal”? Nah, didn’t think so….)
Rather interesting, though, how this quaint sentiment echoes Biden’s crowing, as he left the WH in 2017, that the eight-year Obama administration was essentially “scandel-less”…itself a scandalous claim that the Narrative(TM), as a sign of its devoltion to truth, spread far and wide.
(Seems to be a favorite—and fruitful—theme of theirs….)
OTOH, as we well know, Democrats don’t DO scandals.
By definition.
Simply not possible.
A lie and distraction by all those disingenuous Trump-supporting Republicans….
(Though Republicans CAN tell the truth…but only if they’re not Trump supporters…)
But the revelations of classified documents stored in Biden’s garage along with his Corvette seem to Charen to be too too Trumpish to justify.
Too funny. Lets be real here: Ex Presidents and ex Veeps (and Senators and Congress critters ect.) have been leaving office with classified documents in their possession since time out of mind. Yet for some reason nobody really ever gave a fig until Trump.
Now, maybe we all should care more about Ex’s who posess classified information and how they handle and store it. Maybe there should be more effort put in to security and accountability for such things. But it’s patently ridiculous to pretend that this was something that was of great concern before now.
Well, I wish I had read that before lunch. I need to lose about 20 lbs, and that certainly diminished my appetite. Temporarily.
I would suggest as a dissertation subject for any PHD candidate in the field of Psychology, “The under lying psychosis of the anti-Trumper”. Separating the true anti-Trumper from those who simply detest him for political reasons, of course.
I really believe that an ordinarily healthy person should have little trouble separating Trump’s more unfortunate personality traits from his excellent performance as President. Most are cognizant of the fact that a quirky personality is a trait of many successful people.
neo:
So glad you took Charen’s piece on! Fisked and filleted.
I believe Charen is entirely sincere. A testament to self-delusion.
OMB, what can’t it do to reality? A supernatural fantastic power it truly is.
Everyone is corrupt. The system is rigged. No one is honest. No one really plays by the rules.
Sounds about right.
Mona Charen cadged a law degree, then never practiced. She landed a position in the White House PR operation in 1984 and managed at the same time to place articles in venues like National Review. From thence, she established herself as a Republican opinion journalist. Her career peaked around about 1995, when she was a regular on the CNN program Capital Gang. She was let go by CNN in 1998. She’s produced three books on disparate subjects, but all structured as critiques of the left and written a column distributed by Jewish World Review.
She married a lawyer named Robert Parker in 1989. Parker had a three year stint in the counsel’s office of a federal agency which he managed to parlay into a BigLaw partnership at age 31. She’s had three children in the interim, one of whom she’s roped in to contributing to The Bulwark. Her family is very much ensconced in a component of greater Washington of which people are justly suspicious has been a beneficiary of massive rent-seeking. (Her home in Great Falls, Fairfax County, Va. consists of 4,100 sq feet of interior space on an acre of land, which Zillow avers could fetch $1.657 million). Her husband is very much the same type as Phllip Perry (Mr. Lizard Cheney), absent some curlicues. (Mr. Parker is Jewish, has three children rather than five, hasn’t had any proximate relations in public office, and hasn’t had to sink time and money into a 2d home in Teton County, Wyoming in order to keep the missus happy).
My impression of Charen the last several years is that she’s Margaret Wade from Dennis the Menace, and that seems to have trumped anything else in which she might ever have taken an interest, but maybe not. Both she and Lizard have trafficked in errant nonsense in the last couple of years, but perhaps in bubble world in which she and Cheney live, you and me and everyone we know subscribes to the same mess.
“More than fiscal responsibility, conservatism is founded upon modesty about what government can achieve. As the Republicans rose to cheer Trump’s assertion that “Every problem can be solved,” we saw that insight go out the window.” – Mona Charen on President Trump’s first State of the Union speech.
Mona’s failure to recognize the Trump agenda as MAGA populism demonstrates that the ability to put words together in pleasing phrases doesn’t mean there is any insight in them.
No one, apparently with the exception of Mona, ever thought Trump was a fiscal conservative. But then, neither was Bush the Younger.
Having failed to grasp Trump’s appeal to national sovereignty– or more likely because of it, her disdain of Trump put her at odds with the American blue-collar worker. What was left is the elitism of the globalists who are nearly as dangerous to America as the socialists.
Not to many years ago, the head–Stated Clerk–of the Presbyterian Church USA asserted that the two guys Kyle Rittenhouse were peacefully marching, and that his weapon was illegally acquired.
He lied about both. Either he lied about having done sufficient work to know what he was talking about (implicit in a declarative sentence), or he knew and lied anyway.
Why? He has, one would think, two audiences. One which does not know better and believes him, and one which knows better and knows he’s lying. How does the math work? You convince the second group–once more, likely–that you cannot be trusted. And you deliberately mislead the first group. Is misleading the first group worth convincing the second group, one more time, that you’re a liar?
In my experience, there’s a third group. A woman talking about Michael Brown having his hands up and begging “Don’t shoot!”. I said that had been disproven almost immediately. She said she knew that but preferred to believe it and I was not to correct her about other things.
Perhaps the PCUSA guy was talking to the third group whose likely knowledge of various affairs is not relevant.
I can imagine trying to talk about “no scandals” to someone who claims to believe Charen. List them, get either figuratively or literally waved off. Facts don’t matter. They know but they don’t care that they know.
So, Mike. My guess is that Charen knows better, knows she’s lying but doesn’t care since those who know better aren’t her market and proving once again she’s a liar costs her nothing. She’s misleading the ignorant and reinforcing my Third Group.
She’s not detached from reality. She’s reading it very well.
IrishOtter, Yes sounds correct to me also.
However Charen believes that only Trumpers have that attitude. So by extension, she must think no one is corrupt (certainly NOT Biden), there’s no rigging of the system, all politicians are honest and play by the rules. Poor Mona, I wonder how she feeds all the unicorns living in her backyard?
“My hypothesis was always that Mona was hopelessly in love with Bill Kristol…” – Abraxas
There’s a YouTube podcast of Bill Kristol interviewing James Carville about the potential candidates for 2024. President Trump certainly produced clarity to which side people align in the national sovereignty/globalism struggle.
Great example of a person justifying their bad decisions, and how it builds upon itself.
I have a Grand Unified Theory of NeverTrumpism. It’s based on two words, or rather one word and a familiar non-verbal expression: “Eeyeww! Gross!”
To understand NeverTrumpism, imagine that expression as typically associated with teenage girls, and note that many NeverTrumpers have just such a girl inside them. To that girl Trump arrived like a dead and rotten fish deposited on her doorstep. Or if she’s a Washingtonian (DC), on her bed. There is simply nothing anyone can conceivably say about that fish that will change the girl’s reaction.
To a number of moderate Republicans of fairly high income and status, Trump was and is just simply, horribly, thoroughly gross, and can never be anything else. This gut reaction precedes and determines all reasoning. I’ve seen it on the part of several people with whom I’m personally acquainted, a couple of them relatives. They weren’t particularly liberal. One is more or less a neocon, others probably voted for Bush, or at least were not violently against him. It was “eeyeww, gross!” before they ever heard a single loony or nasty tweet. And nothing was ever going to change that. In fact of course much of Trump’s behavior only fixed it more firmly in them.
This is why the tack some of us try, “Well, consider what he actually did in office,” is a waste of time on these people. You might as well ask that girl to judiciously weigh the faults and virtues of that fish.
Richard Aubrey:
Those PCUSA, ah, em, eh, functionaries gave up Truth long ago, now they are the voice of P. Pilate. Our congregation left the PCUSA 16 years ago for ECO.
She believed exactly what the Democrats Propaganda Ministry wanted her to believe.
Wish she would name 1 adult in this administration, it’s entirely made up of Deep Stateers, minions and Diversity check offs
This is why the tack some of us try, “Well, consider what he actually did in office,” is a waste of time on these people. You might as well ask that girl to judiciously weigh the faults and virtues of that fish.
You’re talking about the NeverTrump residue. People who actually cared about policy got off the train when they discovered Trump at his worst wasn’t any more of a threat to what they cared about than was George W. Bush. The ones who did not get off the train can be sorted into several categories: (1) people who couldn’t bear to admit they’d misjudged anything, (2) people who have only a superficial interest in policy, (3) grifters, (4) people dependent on liberal patronage, and (5) people who are functional advocates of open borders. I suspect most of the NeverTrump residue fits into multiple categories.
“Everyone is corrupt. The system is rigged. No one is honest. No one really plays by the rules.” Mona Charen
Demonization to buttress her delusions.
I can understand why a never-Trumper like Charen would support and excuse the most obviously corrupt President in my lifetime, after all he is not Trump. What is a little bit harder for me to understand is why her faith in Biden would be altered in the slightest by this latest scandal, which pales in comparison with Biden’s obvious incompetence, lies, and corruption. How many people are actually the least bit surprised that old Joe might have taken some documents that didn’t belong to him?
I can understand those who say that it’s no big deal because Biden is one of the good guys. I can’t understand those who say they thought Biden was a good guy until this latest scandal.
Gregory Harper:
I think the reason is that the parallels to Trump’s papers are just too striking. That’s much harder for some people to wave away then other far more awful things Biden did, because of those obvious and almost inescapable parallels. For example, there’s no Trump parallel to Biden’s withdrawal from Afghanistan That would tend to make Biden worse than Trump rather than better. But that’s not the point. It’s that the hypocrisy of saying Trump is a criminal for what he did with classified papers versus having to somehow defend and rationalize Biden having papers in his garage with his Corvette that makes it stick in their craw.
Of course, some do manage the task of defending Biden despite this. But some simply cannot. Those words of Biden’s when he asked how anyone could be so irresponsible (about Trump’s MAL papers) ring too loudly in their ears.
none dare call it treason if treason doth prosper
https://nypost.com/2023/01/16/ex-top-intel-official-douglas-wise-knew-hunter-biden-laptop-had-to-be-real-but-signed-disinfo-letter/
Biden is a rotten fish, and Charen cannot/ will not smell him because she has Democrat BS shoved up both nostrils, up to her ethmoid sinuses.
For an antidote to Charen, the late great Paul Johnson in April 2016 on Trump:
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2023/01/thought-for-the-day-paul-johnson-on-trump.php
Neo:
I guess I can believe that somebody who doesn’t really follow politics that closely might have difficulty defending Biden in this latest scandal. But Charen has been around long enough to know that this is exactly who Biden is and who he has always been.
I’m pretty sure if you asked a random selection of the Washington elite “who is most likely to leave a stash of classified documents in his garage next to his Corvette?” the answer would always be Joe Biden. It would have been Joe Biden last year, 10 years ago and 40 years ago.
Not one scandal in Biden’s administration? Adults in charge? The DOJ has been methodical and even handed? Biden has conducted his presidency with dignity?
Oh my. TDS and in the bubbled thinking. In spades.
I get people not liking Trump’s personality. It’s not my cup of tea either. But Biden’s personality isn’t exactly winning either.
One thing that interests me is how much Trump is loved by his base. I’ve watched many of his rallies. They are amazing. Thousands of cheering, flag-waving, patriots showing their love for him. I like his policies and even some elements of his style but have never felt as enthusiastic about him as his devoted followers are. These rallies may well have scared the heck out of the Democrats. They do resemble a cult of the personality.
Contrast what Trump accomplished while being hounded by the deep sate with Biden’s policies that have opened our borders, led us into ruinous inflation, botched the Afghanistan withdrawal, created a shortage of energy, weakened our armed forces with an emphasis on DEI, raised taxes, and much more. All the while beclowning himself in public appearances where he’s unable to read his teleprompter or notes and can’t find his way off stages and/or speaker’s platforms. He tells whoppers on a daily basis that are ignored by the MSM, which called Trump a liar whenever they disagreed with any of his ideas.
The Never Trumper conservatives are a strange group. Many are people I thought well of before Trump. Jonah Goldberg, Brett Stephens, and Michael Medved are a few. IMO, they just cannot get past their dislike of his personality. And that’s unfortunate. We need everyone who has conservative leanings on our side.
Unfortunately, many of the Never Trumpers will be just as opposed to De Santis as they are Trump. They seem truly blinded by being in the bubble of D.C.
In 2020, America elected Joe Biden to be not-Trump—a role for which he seemed well-suited.
I am reminded of the comment on the 2020 election that my Democrat brother sent out. Said that he hoped Biden would be a uniter. Guess my brother hadn’t been paying much attention to what Joe had been saying…. put you in chains….etc.
https://twitter.com/JonathanTurley/status/1615506379350867970?cxt=HHwWhICwmcSft-ssAAAA
For a period of time in 2016 I was bordering on being a ” Never Trumper” , during the primaries. I was concerned about his past support of aggressive eminent domain for the purpose of transferring private property to another private owner. I also opposed his support of Stop and Frisk, which is supported by one of the worst Supreme Court decisions in history, simultaneously undermining two parts of the Bill of Rights, the second and the fourth Amendments.
That being said, I could not accept not voting against Hillary! So I reluctantly voted for Trump and more energetically in 2020.
Makes me sad thinking about 2016. One of the persons I talked politics with a lot that year about Trump on Facebook has passed since then . She needed a kidney transplant and I considered testing as a donor . The transplant screeners were concerned about my blood pressure and there was concern about my financial situation and I never followed thru with the test. Time flies and people are gone from our lives.
Gregory Harper:
True. It always would have been Biden who would be voted the one most likely to say that.
And yet one mustn’t underestimate people’s ability to forget what they already know, if they need to.do so.
There is something about all of this that is indeed very strange and very hard to understand. For example, I shared the early distrust of Trump. And I didn’t find his personality suited to the presidency, either. However, it was clear he had a great sense of humor because he gave the most entertaining political speeches I ever saw. It as also clear he was smart, although not in any conventional “intellectual” way. Then when he actually became president, I could see quite early that he was doing a pretty darn good job.
And I never could stand Biden.
NeverTrumpers saw none of that. You couldn’t predict who they’d be, either – although I definitely would have predicted George Will, which turned out to be the case. But the rest of them? They tended to be DC insiders, although not always. And I think another characteristic they shared is that they tended to be snobs. But how does one define a snob? I would not have described all of them that way prior to the NeverTrump phenomenon.
And if it’s mostly a style thing, then why do some of them or most of them seem to be fine with Biden? Makes no sense.
Well, from what I’ve seen in the past two years, Biden is transformative. He transformed us from an energy exporter into an energy importer. A strong economy to what we have today. A strong global presence to today where it looks like China is going to move on Taiwan. And Russia has invaded the Ukraine.
Mona Charen.
The mold grows older on this forgotten slice of white bread.
I’ve started checking anti-Trump articles to see how quickly they mention “chaos.” They all seem to now. They never explain what chaos they’re referring to, and apparently never try to think through how it’s possible to describe the Trump years as more chaotic than the Obama or Biden years.
How odd that it should seem to someone like Charen that the defining quality of MAGA was “burn it all down.” We voted for a change, certainly, but that’s hardly different from what most voters support whenever the White House or Congress changes hands. Didn’t Biden begin to “burn it all down” pretty much the day of taking office? He couldn’t wait to reverse everything Trump had done. Change is neither chaotic nor orderly in itself.
Art Deco: “You’re talking about the NeverTrump residue. People who actually cared about policy got off the train when they discovered Trump at his worst wasn’t any more of a threat to what they cared about than was George W. Bush.”
No, I’m talking about something deeper than that. Your description would mainly apply to people who don’t have the gut-level revulsion I’m describing, which usually overwhelms everything else. People who have it may be deep policy wonks or ignorant and indifferent. I think Kevin Williamson, formerly of NRO, may be an example of the former.
And a few updates (of the “Tell-us-what-we-already-know” variety)…
“FBI Decided Not To Monitor Biden Document Search”—
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/fbi-decided-not-monitor-biden-document-search
Opening graf:
“After President Biden’s lawyers found classified documents at an office he used at a DC think tank, His Justice Department considered, and then declined, a plan to have FBI agents monitor a search for classified documents at his residences, [Emphasis in original; Barry M.] in order to ‘avoid complicating later stages of the investigation,’ and because Biden’s attorneys ‘had quickly turned over a first batch and were cooperating,'[Emphasis mine; Barry M.] the Wall Street Journal reports, citing people familiar with the matter….
“Instead, the DOJ decided that it would be just fine for Biden’s lawyers to conduct the additional searches by themselves, and would agree to immediately notify the Justice Department if they found any other potentially classified records – after which law-enforcement authorities would take them….” [Emphasis mine; Barry M.]
Heh…
And while not fresh off the “press” this has aged well…since EVERYTHING is about “the coverupsssssss”…
“Not A Coup, But A Cover-Up”—
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/not-coup-cover
File under: But, but, but “There have been no scandals”…and—WRT the Monad—there NEVER WILL be/never CAN be (all to be intoned with non-stop reverb).
Instead of monin’ and groanin’ I think we need a nice game of chicken—spearheaded by EVIL REPUBLICANS—to DISTRACT us from the current “issue” (i.e., non-issue) of Biden’s classified documents…
“With 2 days until deadline to raise debt limit, Congress not in session, Biden not negotiating;
“The Democratic Congress passed a year-long, $1.7 trillion omnibus spending bill in December, which raised domestic and defense spending but didn’t address the debt ceiling.”—
https://justthenews.com/government/congress/congress-out-session-two-days-go-debt-limit-reached
How ’bout it, Mona?
(And if the guvmint DOES shut down, so much the better!—to bash those awful, deplorable, irresponsible, anti-American nutjobs—right?)
“So for now I guess she’s stuck with it.”
We’re all stuck with her idiotic Biden vote.
Like all Thuggish Organizations, the Democrats are organizing their official pushback (as they say, “The best defense is a relentless offence”):
“WH Accuses Republicans of Hypocrisy on Biden Documents”—
https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/wh/2023/01/17/id/1104779/
“White House claimed Biden’s Delaware house used for official business but now says it’s ‘personal’ “—
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/white-house-claimed-bidens-delaware-house-used-official-business-now-says-personal
File under: Whatever…
+ Bonus:
“Obama’s Ethics Chief: Biden’s ‘Negligence’ in Handling of Classified Docs ‘Appalling'”—
https://www.newsmax.com/politics/biden-trump-obama/2023/01/17/id/1104807/
(Not that the whole concept of ‘Obama’s “Ethics Chief”‘ is totally devoid of humor…)
Meet the Anti-Mona (AKA Marjorie Taylor-Greene):
https://twitter.com/RepMTG/status/1615359135603638273
+ Bonus:
(Looks like “for the Big Guy” it wasn’t JUST 10%…)
https://twitter.com/DC_Draino/status/1615379712024498176
Not sure why we’d give NeverTrump the benefit of good intentions, sincere beliefs, etc, after seeing how they’ve turned on their former audience and the things they used to write.
Broader than that, not sure why we’d think paid political writing wasn’t a performance art.
When a guy writes for years that Bounty is the quicker-picker-upper, and then switches jobs and writes for Brawny, we don’t usually consider that person to be confused or in an agony of changing long-held beliefs, I hope. When we saw Robert Downey Jr as a superhero tycoon in Iron Man we weren’t confused because we’d seen him as an FBI agent in another movie and wondered how hard it had been to make the switch.
Mona Charen was playing a character of a public intellectual for money. She’s playing a different one now. I don’t think it matters how much of it she actually believes. She’s being paid to sell you something, and it’s not even all that different from what she was selling before really. (What’s different is the audience she’s selling to.) My decision to buy what she’s selling, or not, doesn’t depend on her actually believing any of it, any more than it does when I buy paper towels.
Wondering if anyone here will argue that politics is totally not about marketing. National politics in the US involves swaying public opinion, and the result of swaying it your way is enormous amounts of power and the control of taxpayers’ money. The hands of marketers are involved in pretty much anything that touches politics. Organizations that get money from governments can certainly afford their services.
I don’t say that marketing controls our elections–anyone who says I am saying that is straw-manning me. (That I declare this in advance will not of course stop the straw-manning, they’ll pop up right on cue.) I am saying though that anyone whose primary source of income is public political opinion is getting paid by marketers, directly or at one remove. Marketers don’t always make happen what they are paid to make happen; none the less they are paid by people who wish to shape public behavior and they are working to do that through people like Mona Charen. Looking like you believe what you say sells. “Based on a true story” helps sell books and movies. Tell-all memoirs stop selling when people find out they are made up. Not sure why we’d think that for professional public opinion, the appearance of sincerity wouldn’t be marketable.
Amateurs of long-standing like neo are probably not part of this system, true. It may be difficult, having spent years writing as an amateur, to picture how the professionals’ world is very different. But community theater isn’t like Hollywood, and playing basketball at the YMCA is not like playing for the NBA. And being a blogger is not like being Mona Charen or Bill Kristol or even Paul Krugman for that matter.
The people who comment here are the same people who forty years ago would have been writing letters to the editor. They put their time in it because something about it satisfies them personally and so it’s not surprising that a lot of us here express sincere beliefs. What neo does is closer to that than what Mona Charen does.
Mona Charen is a paid a lot of money–compared to most people, 50th percentile individual income for full-time work is about $55K–to say things that are given away free. If she were paid to write novels, we’d be buying the novels. She’s paid to write political opinions, and we’re given that for free, because it’s marketing. As they say, if you’re not paying for it, you’re the product.
Not picking on Mona Charen here. Insert any paid purveyor of political opinions, including any you may have seen that I have praised.
There’s something to that.
When I switched to Charmin, there was a SWAT team at my front door within 24 hours.
BTW, how much does Victor Davis Hanson make?
om
I used to be on a presbytery social justice and peacemaking committee–86-92, more or less. And commissioner to presbytery meetings.
What a zoo.
Used to call up Louisville to see about one thing or another and was stuck on which interpretation was more charitable: Is it worse to accuse somebody of lying like this, or so incredibly stupid they believe it?
Despite being Infantry by nature and training, I had the misfortune of spending a year in Air Defense–the old Nike Herc, to date myself. I was exposed to work on ABM–Nike Zeus and Sprint systems–and so was equipped to follow the SDI debates. What a clown show.
Examples abound of the most appalling ignorance resisting actual facts, on pretty much any subject you can find.
It won’t surprise you to know Louisville had time to expend a few words on the Waukeesha massacre. Something happened up there.
But my larger point is which audience Charen and such like are trying to affect. I think it’s the one which knows better but prefers not to. The ignorant ara already managed.
Wendy, that…
Trump = CHAOS
…is an excellent point.
It’s a major “talking point” that’s been embraced wholeheartedly by those who’ve been pushing the Narrative(TM) hard.
As if antifa and BLM are Trump-run and Trump-encouraged…
As if the Russiagate coup attempt caused no chaos whatsoever…
As if the multiple impeachment attempts and the 24/7 media’s collective shrieking of across-the-board lies were all Trump’s fault…
As if the 2020—and 2022—elections were fair, honest, transparent and in no way controversial.
(And let’s not start with the January 6 frame-up.)
It’s as though there’s been absolutely NO chaos since the last presidential inauguration.
Yep. Playing the “nothing-to-see-here-everything-is-just-great” card for all it’s worth…
IMHO Mona Charen is sincere in beliefs.
She has literally transferred her profound contempt for Trump into idolatry for Biden
Logic / facts have nothing to do with it; it’s all based upon emotion and feelings.
Mona Charen’s contempt for Trump (the epitome of evil) and bizarre ‘worship’ of Biden ( Christ, Moses, FDR, Lincoln all rolled into one) is akin to a religious belief.
I cannot think of any other explanation.
At a minimum, her comments will leave the door open for her continual employment in the open sewer that is DC or with the media.
President “Unity” strikes again!
“Biden’s ‘fiscally demented’ insult at GOP fits pattern: ‘One of the most divisive presidents’;
“Biden used an MLK event to attack Republicans,…”—
https://www.foxnews.com/media/biden-fiscally-demented-insult-gop-fits-pattern-one-most-divisive-presidents
Opening graf:
‘Critics have called out President Biden for hypocrisy for calling Republicans “fiscally demented” at a Martin Luther King Jr. Day event Monday….’
Just think of it as a “Biden” charm offensive…
(After all, he’s in a bit of hot water at the moment…even if it may not be as “hot” as it ought to be…)
To quote the inimitable Mona Charen:
“…Biden has conducted the presidency with dignity. He has gone some way toward restoring a sense that the system, whatever its flaws, is basically sound….”
Bua. Ha ha.
People who have it may be deep policy wonks or ignorant and indifferent. I think Kevin Williamson, formerly of NRO, may be an example of the former.
Williamson’s primary interest is the theatre. If I’m not mistaken, so is Jay Nordlinger’s. I don’t think either one have much history in the study of policy.
Williamson has issues with the world in which he was raised (Amarillo and Lubbock, Tx) and with his late mother in particular; his complaint is very much with the sort of ordinary people who vote for Trump. I cannot imagine how his father, his step-mother, and his brother’s family make sense of his writings (or how his brother, recently deceased, did; his mother died before he moved to the east coast). Perhaps, like Rod Dreher’s late sister, they do not read what he writes. Biographical tidbit: Williamson has re-married and settled in Dallas.
Marketers don’t always make happen what they are paid to make happen; none the less they are paid by people who wish to shape public behavior and they are working to do that through people like Mona Charen.
Her husband’s earnings have been ample enough for them to afford a house that would fetch $1.65 million. She can get along without whatever stipend Charlie Sykes is paying her and paying her son with Pierre Omidyar’s largesse. Wm. Kristol’s financiers pulled the plug and shut his magazine down. George Will and David Frum are independently wealthy and Will is now 81 years old. They cannot be bought. Ross Douthat likely is in a cleft stick financially; however, he’s also the most circumspect of this crew. Saying it’s their profession doesn’t explain much.
The hatred of Trump is probably based on revulsion toward his personality. My oldest daughter is a lawyer and FBI agent. We don’t discuss ;politics but she has been a lefty for years. She was visiting a couple of years ago and on a Sunday morning was watching the talking heads on TV. I quit that years ago. Anyway, as I walked by she almost shouted, “Trump is so incompetent !” I stopped for a moment and asked, “Unemployment at 3% and the Dow Jones at 33,000 is incompetence?” She replied, “Yes!” I did not respond.
I used to subscribe to the blog, Ricochet. I was twice suspended for using terms the administrator objected to. One was “TDS,” and the other was “Vichy Republicans” for members of the Senate, in particular. I finally unsubscribed as it seemed the administrators were too far in the Mona Charen direction.
I think snobbery is part of it, although why anyone living in the DC swamp would be a snob is a mystery.
Mona Charen is a paid a lot of money–compared to most people
The IRS 990 for The Bulwark indicates they had $1.36 million in expenses for 2019. The salaries of certain officers are reported (these amounted to about $155,000). If 2/3 of their expenses are labor costs, they were paying $750,000 in compensation to staff and contributors other than Sykes. Aside from Sykes, they list about 20 people on their masthead as employees and contributors. That’s about $37,000 per person. Her syndicated column is online and distributed by Jewish World Review. I doubt she gets squat for it.
Mike K on January 18, 2023 at 11:13 am said:
The hatred of Trump is probably based on revulsion toward his personality. My oldest daughter is a lawyer and FBI agent. We don’t discuss ;politics but she has been a lefty for years. She was visiting a couple of years ago and on a Sunday morning was watching the talking heads on TV. I quit that years ago. Anyway, as I walked by she almost shouted, “Trump is so incompetent !”
Media + deep state propaganda, + superficial characteristics.
Trump was outstanding in practice, for example his approach to peace in the ME. The establishment State types are the ones who are incompetent at foreign policy.
Peace won’t come anytime soon by making the focal point peace with Palestinians. The way to do it is the way Trump did, going for peace with the Gulf states who have a vested interest in peace with Israel due to the Iranian threat. The exact opposite of the Obama/Biden approach. But the State types with their advanced degrees from elite universitates not only lack any real world practical experience but their education on the world, particularly the Arab Islamic world, is garbage.
One thing I read somewhere is that the female take on Trump is based on the fact women tend to have good verbal skills and measure intelligence based upon that. Men tend to be less developed verbally than women. Well educated and intelligent women would be inclined to judge someone with Trump’s verbal and communication ticks harshly. But these same women often lack any real world experience to judge beyond the superficial.
At one time, Al Hunt (Mr. Judy Woodruff) was Mona Charen’s nemesis.
Now Al and Mona have morphed into a single entity (Chona Woodchuck).
Worse than brundlefly
https://twitter.com/TrustIsEarnd/status/1615433733917532160
And if it’s mostly a style thing, then why do some of them or most of them seem to be fine with Biden? Makes no sense.
The Wizard of Oz understood that a medal, a diploma, or a testimonial could take the place of actual courage, a brain, or a heart. It’s like that with the approval of official Washington. When you get the seal of approval, it doesn’t matter what you’re really like.
But more likely, Mona Charen and her colleagues don’t hear anything Biden says. All that gets through to them is that he’s not that horrible Trump, so he must be dignified, honorable, and competent.
With some people there may also be sympathy with or for Biden. The incompetence and the jes’ folks middle class po’ mouthing that they’d despise in other politicians make them feel sorry for Joe, but how Mona turns that into pity into respect for Biden as noble and statesmanlike I don’t know.
I commend you on an extraordinary well written and insightful article. The Never-Trumpers like Mona Charan and Bill Kristol made their Faustian bargain with the devils of the left and are now condemned to defending their poor decision for the rest of their professional life. One would not not need them to say that Trump would have been the better President, but they cannot even bring themselves to acknowledge some of the worse depravities of this sick administration
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2023/01/18/tories-told-not-expect-tax-cuts-liz-truss-backers-urge-push/
Not the only one
https://twitter.com/julie_kelly2/status/1615724340460355587?cxt=HHwWhoC8gcWumuwsAAAA
“Aside from Sykes, they list about 20 people on their masthead as employees and contributors. That’s about $37,000 per person.”
The Bulwark staff may be leftist now but I doubt if they run it as a socialist enterprise. Charen is the most well-known name on the masthead except for Kristol so I’m sure she gets a bigger share. I’ll bet her hourly pay is not too shabby.
I’ll bet her hourly pay is not too shabby.
I won’t. Her best days professionally were nearly 30 years ago. Her regular broadcasting gig was discontinued in 1998 and she never landed another one. She never landed a position in the Bush Administration, either. The Ethics and Public Policy Center did elect to waste salary money on her ‘services’ in 2015. When her contract was up, she was cut loose. She writes for The Bulwark because she’s hardly welcome anywhere else. National Review quit recycling her Jewish World Review columns three years ago. She’s 65 years old, she hasn’t cracked a law book since 1984, and the only salable skill she ever had aside from that (the ability to turn usable copy in on time) is in a declining industry. Stick a fork in her.
Mona Charen is delusional. Her brain has been so badly warped by her hatred that it no longer functions. Hate drives people insane.
Frederick,
“I don’t say that marketing controls our elections”
The marketing/propaganda lays the groundwork and establishes the Overton window. That is sufficient to determine most public policy. I have been saying for years that the bias/partisanship of the news media is LEAST effective during the election campaign. That’s because consumers of the news/voters are looking for bias then. [Also because the news propagandists cannot help themselves and jump on the scale with both feet at election time.]
It’s when there isn’t an election campaign that the marketing is effective. [While we are probably now in a place where the vast majority of voters realize we are in a constant political campaign, this didn’t used to be nearly this bad.]
For example, we’ve never debated global warming in a national election because the scientific “fact” had been hammered home via relentless marketing disguised as news (and then education).