Bubba, BO, and Biden

Joe Biden's first State of the Union speech was a combination of respectable rhetoric regarding Ukraine and insipid blather dismissing our lying eyes regarding his performance and the economy. As National Review's Jim Geraghty opined, "no one is going to remember much of what he said in another day or so."

Biden's opportunity to reset his trajectory, one opened by the hard reality smack regarding energy policy that Putin's aggression put forth, was at hand. Barring an improbable "No Mas" withdrawal by Putin, or an as-unlikely coercive cessation of his vital functions at the hands of someone who can get past his growing paranoia, the world is looking at a new order, with an aggressive Russia funding its Ukraine occupation (heroics aside, Russia will likely overwhelm Ukraine by sheer numbers in the end) with petrodollars, and the West fortifying itself against Putin's revanchism.

America's response to all this should be to reset her energy policy, to abandon the coercive, Quixotic, and ultimately pointless "greening" of the nation in favor of improving global security. We would best serve our allies in Europe by expanding our oil and gas drilling and by building a couple hundred modern, modular nuclear plants so that we can ship more of that oil and gas across the Atlantic. That's really the only way to starve the Bear enough to make it retreat to its own borders again.

All this is achievable by Biden - if he has the will and a high-schooler's cognizance of the last 30 years of domestic political history.

Biden's first year has brought his approval numbers to historic lows, and contributed greatly to what's all but certain to be a major wipeout for his party in the mid-term elections. That this arc and outcome happened to both his Democratic predecessors is no secret.

Nor are their disparate reactions.

Clinton's first two years were boilerplate liberal wish-list, which produced an epic spanking for his party in his first mid-terms. He took the hint (albeit dragging and screaming) and remarketed himself as a centrist, abandoning his early 'textbook-60s-radical' policies and taking the most popular parts of the GOP's ‘Contract With America’ as his own. He did reasonably well thereafter, as did the nation.

Obama's first two years were the same sort of progressive fantasyland, which produced a serious spanking for his party in his first mid-terms. He rejected the message, and instead chose to dig his heels in, double down on his policy demands, and spend the rest of his term complaining, pointing fingers at everyone, and engaging in the very "executive excess" behavior he denounced when he was a senator. His tenure was one of malaise, ever-growing divisiveness, bleakness, and 'what-might-have been' laments.

Why did Obama eschew the adaptation strategy whose effectiveness Clinton demonstrated?

I'm of the opinion that Obama's ego could not stomach walking Clinton's path. After all, Obama was smarter and better than Bubba - the Obamas clearly felt a rivalry with the Clintons and wanted to eclipse them as the Left's royalty. To do as Bill did was to invite comparison and risk being called a copycat. Plus, Obama, being one of the Best-and-Brightest, knew better than the unwashed masses what’s good for them. So, he rejected the successful formula in favor of his own arrogance.

I expect Biden will look to the Obama ‘doctrine’ rather than the Clinton example after the mid-term beat-down, and tell the country that, no, the election results have nothing to do with the direction he chose to take the nation, and yes, he will continue us in that direction no matter the message from the voters. As an Internet acquaintance pointed out, Biden's White House is full of Obama-era people, so a redux of his former boss's approach should surprise no one.

Meaning we will have a couple more years of partisan bickering, gridlock, a further expansion of executive branch overreach, an insufficient response to Putin’s aggression, and more of the same policies that have made a mess of the country this past year.

And no chance of a reconciliation between Red and Blue.