Toddler Politics

Just about a year ago, CNN ran a headline:

Joe Biden's message to Vladimir Putin? The adults are back in charge.

The subtext therein, encapsulated in the usual MSM water-carrying, was detailed in the accompanying article.

While Biden didn't seek to fully explain what it was he came to do, the evidence was everywhere in his answers: Make clear that the traveling circus of the Trump presidency was over -- and that the adults were back in charge.

Oh, if it were only so.

Even before the election, we knew that Bully Boy Biden was prone to bluster and aggression.

Today, Biden's handlers are spending their time and energy telling us why none of the bad stuff going on is Biden's fault. Not inflation, not high gas prices, not the continued lawlessness in our streets, not the southern border crisis... and certainly not the political violence, rhetorical or literal (and if you need to be reminded, the Left has helpfully informed us many times across recent years that words are violence. See Alinsky #4). Worse, he and they refuse to budge off their terrible policies and plans. Even as gas prices have doubled, and appear to be nowhere near a peak, not a jot of Biden's green energy, anti-oil agenda has been reversed or undone. Even as inflation sucks wealth out of workers' pockets, the insistence on giant spending bills as a remedy remains.

Biden is today's Fonzie, unable to say "I was wrong" about anything,

and flipping Harry Truman's "The Buck Stops Here" on its head, Joliet Jake-style.

As to that, he's echoing the pre-eminent message of our cultural elites: "Nothing is your fault. Every bad thing can be blamed on someone else."

Despite the hollowness of the "adults are in charge" promise, the criticism of Trump was accurate. Petulant, mercurial, untethered, tantrum-prone, self-absorbed, and narcissistic. All are behaviors you'd expect from a toddler, and four years in the White House did nothing to mellow any of them.

Quite the opposite, in fact. His persistent pique over losing the election - a loss that he deserved, given his performance in the months leading into the election, are "true colors, shining through." The January 6th riot was a direct result of his temper tantrum, a tantrum he won't even acknowledge, let alone mea culpa. He's persisting, against all evidence, in not only peddling his "stolen election" folderol, he's requiring those who seek his blessing to avow its veracity. His excuse is "this is what my supporters want," but that really is just excuse-making. If he runs again, and all indications are that he will, it'll be as much to prove himself right as anything else. The "good of the country" will be an afterthought.

Up and down the political ranks, we find the same message over and over. In the words of former Minnesota governor Jesse "The Body" Ventura, it always seems to be payback time.

Far too many politicians and policies seem motivated by this sort of toddler politics.

Who can forget Pelosi's petulant tearing up of Trump's State of the Union address?

By the way, if you applauded her doing so, you are part of the problem.

Policies across the platform seem more apt to be the result of "the other team did it, so we have to undo it" contrarianism than about doing right by the nation. Punishment for transgression is also part of the game, and it's not the exclusive province of either team. Florida's governor Ron DeSantis decided to give Disney some payback for the company's whining over the misnamed "Don't Say Gay" bill by revoking some government-bestowed special treatment. In a vacuum, DeSantis's move could be considered a proper leveling of the field, but we all know it was born of "I'll show you who's boss" peevishness, and it’s a black mark on an otherwise promising Presidential possibility.

The whinging has boiled over to dangerous levels with the leak of the draft Supreme Court Dobbs decision. The interception of a 26 year old man intent on assassinating Justice Brett Kavanaugh in his home in the wake of that leak (and the publication of Justices' home addresses by activists who betray the memory of Ruth Bader Ginsburg even as they leverage her name) marks yet another critical moment in the sundering of our nation's fabric. That the Democrats are blocking added security measures for the Court's Justices (and bragging about it) is a atrocity. We all know beyond a shadow of a doubt that the rhetoric and theater would be one hundred eighty degrees different were it a liberal Justice so threatened.

That this is a reflection of our corrupted and devolving society is obvious. Payback politics is everything now, and it's escalating in a vicious cycle of "do unto them" partisanship.

We really do need some adults in charge. There isn't a shred of adultness to be found in the Terrible Tetrad running the country right now,

and we're not going to get any should the Untethered Orange Id re-enter the White House in 2025. We'd see a much better slate of policies from the GOP than from the Democrats, but barring a miraculous disavowal of their past profligacy, I don't expect the addressing of the thirty trillion pound elephant in the room: the runaway spending that's spinning our national debt up faster than an out-of-control slot machine reel.

While the January 6 dog-and-pony show currently being staged in Congress is a partisan game, it nevertheless has served to remind us that the case against Trump is more than "mean tweets." He encouraged and concurred with a mob chanting "Hang Mike Pence," a (not-so-astonishing) betrayal of his loyal Vice President, for the sin of not believing Trump's stolen election garbage, or wanting to be complicit in an actual coup. It's worth noting that his own party rejected and blocked Trump's demand he be installed for a second term. Echoes of the GOP pushing Nixon out.

I know many on the Right won't want to hear this, but it's absolutely time to relegate Trump to the history books. He's not the answer. Whatever policies he might bring with him would also be put forth by any of several other candidates for the GOP nomination. DeSantis, Haley, Pence, Cruz, Scott, Pompeo, Noem, Cotton, Hawley, Scott, Rubio, and Crenshaw are all potential nominees, and I’m confident we’d get whatever good policies that Trump would offer from them as well, and quite possibly fewer bad ones.

In other words, Trump offers nothing unique, policy-wise, and his wild-man style of leadership is not what the country needs if it's ever to restore to some degree of comity.

In addition, none of them would be saddled with Trump’s history, or the visceral hatred so many have for him, or the record of his reprehensible post-election behavior.

If your goal is political payback, I urge you to rethink it. If the nation is ever going to recover from a binary, Manichean death-spiraling political pendulum (yes, there is such a thing as a spiraling pendulum), it's time to move on. The hard left is small in number, but large in influence, and having the trouble-magnet that is Trump will make it easier to keep that influence. If a less mercurial President sits in the WH, they'll have less to work with in their efforts to fool mainstream Americans into trusting their socialistic lunacy.

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Yours in liberty,

Peter.