All Biden Needed To Not Screw Up The Presidency Was Stay In His Basement, And He Failed

President Joe Biden inherited a nation poised for a tremendous post-COVID resurgence, requiring only mid-level competence to keep things on track. Unfortunately for America, he hasn’t been up to the task.

The biggest issue facing the nation for the past year obviously has been the coronavirus, which has killed more than 600,000 Americans, infected nearly 34 million, and forced the economy into a near standstill last year.

As he entered office, however, the good news for Biden was that multiple vaccines already had been developed and with doses ramping up, thanks to former President Trump’s Operation Warp Speed. The economy was rebounding, and millions of jobs had returned. What was required of the new president was to not screw things up.

But at the four-month mark of his administration, Biden has badly mismanaged things, contributing to a cluster of problems that are increasingly spiraling out of control.  Punchbowl News, an inside-the-Beltway email newsletter, downplayed Biden’s predicaments as mere “brushfires,” as though they were minor headaches to be addressed without much concern. But the nation is facing serious problems either immediately or lurking around the corner.

Millions of Americans had to calculate whether they had enough gas in their cars to keep them mobile after a cyber attack on the Colonial Pipeline, which carries 45 percent of the fuel used by the east coast of the United States. With almost immediate gasoline shortages, rising prices, and gas stations shutting down, the nation would rightly expect the president to snap to attention. Instead, administration officials seemed to shrug at the growing calamity and declined to even offer an opinion on whether the pipeline operator should pay a ransom to the hackers.

It’s a “private sector decision, and the administration has not offered further advice at this time,” said Anne Neuberger, the deputy national security advisor for cyber and emerging technologies. This was three days after the attack had shut down the pipeline.

Despite the public nonchalance, the Biden White House was “acutely sensitive to the images of lines outside gas stations before Memorial Day,” reported Axios, which also noted Biden was being likened to former President Jimmy Carter, who oversaw dramatic fuel shortages in the 1970s and a national malaise. This comparison was made somewhat easier by the recent release of a bizarrely proportioned photo of the Bidens visiting the Carters at home just a few weeks earlier.

In the end, despite longstanding warnings against making payments to terrorists — largely because it incentivizes future attacks — the pipeline company paid a $5 million ransom.