"Another President Bites the Dust"
by Jeffrey Tucker
"We’re seeing the end of trust in American institutions. The war machine and the public-health machine have faced brutal discrediting due to their long records of obfuscation, duplicity, and deception. It’s a reality that the mainstream press tried desperately to prevent. And they are still not reporting it. According to the aggregated polls on Biden’s job approval as accumulated by RealClearPolitics, Biden suddenly finds himself underwater. This is the point at which job disapproval is higher than job approval. It’s a tremendously bad sign for any president.
You probably saw it coming. I did too. It seems inevitable in retrospect. The failings of the present administration have come fast and furious, more so than with any president in living memory. The Biden-Harris administration came to power in a time of national exhaustion from division, bitterness, lockdowns, and unrelenting political frenzy. It was a perfect setup for him. Open the economy, open travel, dial back the insane restrictions, clean up the budget, and just let the country heal on its own.
In the early days of the administration, I gave several interviews in which I advised the new administration to this effect. Ever optimistic (yes I’ve been mostly wrong), I did imagine that it would be more-or-less rational. I suggested three easy steps: 1) stop the trade wars with China and Europe, 2) open up all international travel, and 3) cut it out with all the Covid restrictions that have proven to be so pointless.
It’s like the Biden administration heard my interview and did the opposite. It retained both the tariffs and travel restrictions and tightened restrictions with crazy new mask and vaccine mandates, while blowing up the federal budget and cheering more money printing. Somehow, that obvious path to success eluded this gang of fanatics. They came to power consumed by ideology taught to them in high-end colleges. They burned with a passion for getting it done right away, wiping out any public stain of the Trump administration and putting the socialist stamp on every aspect of American life, mostly by means of the executive order.
The Future of this President: To be sure, there is a problem. The last thing Republicans want right now is the impeachment of Biden for any reason, simply due to his replacement. Kamala Harris would be the worst of all possible worlds, though certainly even more unpopular than Biden himself.
What then is the result of a president who lives in the red zone of approval? He continues to serve, but goes from crisis to crisis. He loses political credibility with his own party. He is unable to muster votes in the House and Senate for his insane policies (this is already starting to happen). His hands are tied.
It’s a tragic feature of any political system that they are all relatively immune from the forces of market discipline. In private markets, consumers and investors are always in a position to punish inefficiency or wrongdoing, however imperfectly they perform at this task. But in public institutions of government, there is no real mechanism to control their operations apart from voting, which is set by the calendar in the American system. That leaves only polls, which themselves are subject to tremendous inaccuracies and exigencies of poll takers. It’s taken too long but finally the decline and fall of the Biden administration are in play.
The Wheel of Justice: Let’s examine some of the huge issues that could prove to cause a full discrediting of this administration, and, along with it, the entire media apparatus that has worked to cover up its misdeeds. I will list them in the order of seriousness.
Inflation. Everything you hear from the Fed amounts to “calm down, it’s transitory.” At some point, it’s no longer believable. The price pressure is affecting every sector of American life, and it is spreading like a cancer. It’s at the grocery store, the gas pump, in housing and rents, in travel and hospitality, and pretty much everything that people buy. It’s also affecting financials in ways that delight the people who check their IRA apps on their phone daily.
Even though these increases delight people, they represent inflation in a different form. They are also unsustainable. The whole mess could amount to a true political disaster waiting to happen. People despise inflation, as we know from the political revolution it caused 40 years ago. Biden will get the blame. If financials eventually turn South and keep going, there will be no saving this administration.
Vaccine Mandates. A bit of blunt talk here I hope you don’t mind: I was never a huge fan of the Covid vaccine, simply because I watched the rush to get it and figured that natural immunity is far safer for almost everyone. Also, I know from cell biology that unstable viruses like this one are not easy against which to vaccine. I was also surrounded by genuine vaccine experts who worried that this whole enterprise could discredit vaccines for several generations. It was hard enough to inspire people to take the jab for medicines that have gone through many years of trials, but it is taking a gigantic risk to impose this thing on a whole population, much less do it by force.
Now the data is in, we are discovering that the whole thing was wildly oversold, mainly so that the manufacturers could earn authorization. Forget the claims of 96% effectiveness; it is now admitted widely that the jab does not stop infection or transmission, and it is still unclear about the extent to which it can actually be credited with curbing severity (that was never even tested at the outset). I can’t prove this but my spider sense on this, speaking as a very close observer of the scene, is that this whole thing is unraveling quickly.
Afghanistan Scandals. This enormous mess is going nowhere. Twenty years of blood and treasure and the entire mess was revealed as pointless in the course of just a few days. If the American military and political class believe that they can just sweep this under the rug, they are mistaken. Too many families have suffered egregious harm, sons and daughters having their lives wrecked supposedly to build freedom in this country, when it just went away like the illusion it always was.
Shortages in Housing and Goods. So many people are on the move right now and discovering that they can no longer count on housing markets and rental markets to work like they once did. Housing is in shortage where people are moving to and in surplus in places where people are moving from. The moratorium on evictions – will they ever end? – has wrecked the rental market at the same time. Any marginal credit risks are being refused for obvious reasons. The poor or those with unstable job situations can forget it. This is going to lead to a genuine crisis and widespread disgruntlement.
Welfarism. The truth is that there is nothing genuinely American about welfare. As a short-term boost, perhaps it passes political muster but as a long-term way of life, as the Biden administration imagines it? No way. In fact, it is not just in America. In most places in the world, particularly with heterogeneous populations, welfare generates political instability. When you have perhaps 15% of the population living off the labors of the other 85% you have a serious basis for building resentment that will make the 80’s and 90’s anti-welfare movements look polite by comparison.
China Aggression. The discrediting of the American empire has caused nothing but delight in Beijing and now we have a regime eyeing its neighbors for a burning desire for more control. The main target is Taiwan but there are others. U.S. influence in that part of the world isn’t entirely evaporated but it is dramatically diminished. And think of this: there is zero chance that the Biden administration could ever consider a war option insofar as China is involved. That fact alone means that every bit of warning to China from the U.S. will be completely ignored.
A Wild Ride Ahead: Yes, all these trends could change but I doubt it. So far this administration has proven itself to be economically ignorant, uncomprehending in terms of understanding the American spirit, and politically unwise, putting ideology ahead of all concerns of viability and even popularity.
Now we see Biden himself slipping into negative territory. In economics and foreign policy, it is even worse. None of this do I welcome; it cannot be good for any country to live through economic and political upheaval all at once. The means exist to avoid both, but the will to do so is not."
