The Tribune

with CHARLIE HARPER

One president is exiting the White House amid increasing reports of his frailty. His successor is riding high. What does it all mean?

More and more frequently, the mainstream press is reporting on the steady slide toward the exit door of Joe Biden. He has undertaken long trips overseas, including recent ones to the southwest African nation of Angola and to the Amazon rain forest.

Angola is a formerly obscure country that has grown in importance in recent years as the US-China global rivalry has spread and intensified. And the trip to Brazil underscored his commitment to the environment. But these were not mandatory journeys for Biden.

When the trips were announced, it almost seemed like the president was still trying to prove to himself and to the world that all the accumulating evidence of his physical and mental decline was premature and erroneous.

If that’s the intent, it’s not working. Ever since his calamitous late June debate performance against his seemingly perpetual rival Donald Trump, it’s been an open secret that Biden’s infirmities were correctly described by former US Attorney Robert Hur, who was appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland to investigate charges that Biden had mishandled classified documents.

In his report to Garland on February 5, 2024, Hur was prophetically accurate in two of his basic conclusions after an exhaustive investigation that concluded with a recommendation against prosecution.

Here are key remarks, taken from Hur’s final report.

On Biden’s sense of himself: “During his long career in public service, Biden has seen himself as a historic figure. Elected to the Senate at age 29, he considered running for president as early as 1980 and did so in 1988, 2008 and 2020. He believed his record in the Senate made him worthy of the presidency, and he collected papers and artifacts related to significant issues and events in his career.

“He used these materials to publish memoirs in 2007 and 2017, to document his legacy and provide evidence that he was a man of presidential timber.”

These conclusions by Hur offer a convincing explanation for Biden’s public posture for at least the past 36 years, and in particular offer real clues to his behaviour during this calendar year, when he abandoned his 2020 pledge to serve one term as a “bridge candidate” to a younger generation of political leadership in the US.

While Biden has long presented himself as a common man born to a working-class family with blue collar roots, he clearly has seen himself and continues to see himself as someone with extraordinary gifts. Hence the reluctance to voluntarily step aside earlier this year.

Here is Hur’s other key conclusion. This is the one that garnered headlines around the world and offered the first key clue to Biden’s impaired condition: “Biden is a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”

Remember how the Democrats universally denounced Hur’s conclusion, even though they relieved the president of the embarrassment of sharing an indictment with Trump on similar charges of mishandling classified material?

There was outrage and indignation all over America’s front pages.

And then it turned out that Hur, a former Republican-appointed US attorney, was not only right but even sympathetic in his portrayal of Biden.

It’s not outrageous to suggest, as many have done, that Biden’s refusal to step aside and permit the Democratic Party to conduct a competitive contest to determine his successor foredoomed any chance of defeating Trump again.

Speaking of whom, the president-elect is clearly enjoying life. We’re not hearing accounts of his golf exploits with friendly touring professionals or wealthy buddies these days. Instead, Trump is defying yet another American political tradition by holding press conferences and basically acting as though he has already taken the oath of office – an event still over four weeks away in the future.

His inauguration is shaping up as something of a coronation. Foreign heads of state are beginning to line up to attend the ceremony as special VIP guests. We will see how extensive this particular guest list turns out to be, but there may be several surprises when the final tally is revealed.

Meantime, two GOP office holders in widely differing jurisdictions have confided that they remain hopeful Trump will calm down soon and realise there are no more electoral battles to fight and win, nor is there any more revenge necessary against real and imagined opponents. Perhaps he will realise that his reelection was sufficient validation, they hope.

Congress departs for its Christmas recess at the end of this week. The mad rush to push Democratic judicial nominations through the Senate while Biden’s party remains in control will have been completed.

Efforts to secure support from skeptical senators by Trump’s more controversial cabinet nominees will also subside for the holidays. After the withdrawal of the notably unqualified Matt Gaetz from Trump’s nomination to be Attorney General, the others have stayed the course in their efforts to prevail.

While most of the attention has been on Defense Secretary nominee and former Fox News host Pete Hegseth, others have quietly been pursuing their ambitions on Capitol Hill.

Those others also include Trump’s pick to head America’s national law enforcement agency – the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). In selecting a dedicated sycophant and acolyte in Kash Patel, the president-elect has picked someone whose main qualification for the position seems to be his eagerness to wreak revenge on Trump’s foes and critics.

The FBI was for many decades operated as a power base for its first and most notable director, J Edgar Hoover. Hoover might have been the most powerful person in Washington for many of his astounding 48 years at the helm of the FBI and its predecessor organisation.

He reportedly used the FBI’s formidable personnel and technical resources to harass and sabotage political dissidents including the Rev Martin Luther King, Jr. and many of the famous Kennedy politicians.

He also allegedly collected information on officials and private citizens using illegal surveillance, wiretapping, and burglaries. Hoover was able to intimidate and threaten many other high-ranking political and social celebrities.

In the 50-odd years since Hoover died when Richard Nixon was the American president, the FBI has been much more apolitical, by the explicit wish of most of the rest of Washington, including Congress and the Executive Branch. Directors were given ten-year terms specifically to at least partially insulate them from political pressure.

The incumbent director, Christopher Wray, is a Republican lawyer and Washington insider who was appointed to his ten-year term by Trump after James Comey was summarily fired early in Trump’s first term, during an FBI investigation into ties between Russia and Trump’s campaign.

But Wray has angered Trump, and that’s not good for job security.

Result: Wray resigned last week with three years to go in his term, saying he was trying to avert a collision with the new Trump administration that would have further entangled the FBI “deeper into the political fray”.

“My goal is to keep the focus on our mission — the indispensable work you’re doing on behalf of the American people every day,” Wray told agency employees. “In my view, this is the best way to avoid dragging the bureau deeper into the fray, while reinforcing the values and principles that are so important to how we do our work.”

One example of Wray’s disloyalty occurred last year, when he described in detail Russian efforts to interfere in the 2020 election that Trump lost to Democrat Joe Biden, even though Trump and senior officials in his administration, including his attorney general and national security adviser, had maintained that China represented a greater threat. Wray also said the FBI had not seen evidence of widespread voter fraud, another claim that Trump still has not abandoned.

We’ll see how Patel’s candidacy for FBI director moves through the Senate. But its fate will be watched carefully.

Signs of a rocky road ahead for House of Representatives Speaker Mike Johnson are evident. His GOP majority will be even slimmer than in the last Congress, and with Democrats likely to be united in opposition to many of Trump’s initiatives, only a couple of defections will spell defeat.

That in turn will embolden ambitious rivals for House leadership, perhaps most notably including stalwart Trump ally Jim Jordan, and several others.