Bidenesque - Being Not Quite President While Little Miss Muffet Waits In The Wings

'God knows he's suffered enough', said Jill Biden to her aide-de-camp, concerned about the constant press reminders of her husband's mental health; but there was nothing she could do about his lapses, stumbles, and losing his way.  She tried - even sudoku and crossword puzzles - but nothing seemed to work.  He wandered, wanted to be read to, and was helped through his day by an attentive staff, teleprompters, and a clean desk. 

 

That last item was a godsend, for the President, when faced with sheafs of briefing papers just stared at them, shuffled them from one corner of the Lincoln, polished mahogany desk to the other, knowing there was something in them he had to look at but without the get-up-and-go to do so.  'Just remove them', Jill suggested to the President's Chief of Staff.  

Although she hesitated to make the allusion, she remembered how Ronald Reagan always had a clean desk.  His litany - patriotism, a small government, a strong military, private enterprise, and God - had earned him two terms and the love of the American people. 'A Shining City On A Hill' was what people remembered when they thought of the President and his reference to the Bible and the greatness of the Republic. One unique selling point.  Advertisers since snake oil salesmen knew this. 

But of course Joe had no such a succinct vision.  He was for the black man, gays, the environment, women; and a hundred other causes and issues - one big potpourri - with no real focus.  Adlai Stevenson was on the right track.  He was for the 'little man', and Herbert Hoover promised 'a chicken in every pot', but Joe got all tangled up when he began to speak, transgender this, pipeline that, Black History Month and Ukraine, and everything came out blah and indistinct. 

Oh, how he tried, but he raised his voice at exactly the wrong times.  His cadence did not match his words.  'If, when, but, and however' got the drumbeat and Putin, Kim, and oil got lost in a garbled mumble. No matter how everyone tried, they simply could not get the President to focus. 

He was becoming 'Bidenesque' a loose assemblage of old memories and past causes.  He meant well, and did have some of the compassion he talked about, but that was somehow linked to puppies and lost kittens; and he could never gin up the same feelings for The Black Man whom he knew he was to praise, reflecting on his tribal innocence, natural wisdom, and racial purity but could not.  

He simply couldn't shake the image of bling, Uzis, and the empty storefronts of the inner city, and each time he started in on the Black Man's position at the top of the human pyramid, he got lost 'in the sands of time', at the real pyramids, the Nile, and Nefertiti - the beautiful Nefertiti, now there was a woman! 

'He's only being Bidenesque' was the meme around the White House, the kindest, gentlest way of referring to the empty suit that sat in the Oval Office, 'a well-meaning, kind, elderly man with a poor memory', the characterization of the Special Counsel who referred to him in a document meant to exonerate him for wrongdoing in the misplacement of Top Secret files. 

'Let him be', said his Vice President, a greedily ambitious woman who knew that as long as she could prop up the old man for another few months, he would be re-elected, drop dead in his second term, and the Presidency would be hers.  As long as Biden was asleep in the Oval Office and not making matters worse by trying to make sense in public, she was safe. 

Out and about she was as toadying as could be.  Mr. President this, Mr. President that, holding chairs for him like a zoot-suited waiter at a fancy restaurant, fawning over him, loving him to death while all the while plotting like Clytemnestra and Tamora to get rid of him.  

She had long ago begun to form her own shadow campaign staff, young men and women with absolute faith in her ability speak for the nation, as a black woman  the embodiment of the progressivism the President could only talk about.  She would be the new Black Athena, a racial and gender firebrand putting the likes of Uncle Tom Obama far in the rear view mirror.  Hers would be the first real revolutionary presidency which would put diversity and inclusivity aside in favor of radical street justice.  She would shed her straight locks and goofy smile and go ghetto. Oh, what she would do! 

Yet closeting the President for the final eight months of the campaign year was not going to be easy, and even 'being Bidenesque' was far too dangerous.  There had to be a way to completely shut the fool up, but how?

The first move was to go toe to toe with Jill Biden who refused to acknowledge the President's dementia and wanted him out front and strong.  She needed to be put in her place.  After all she was a political non-entity, a cipher, a nothing in the dog-eat-dog world of Washington; and here she was pushing the old man off a cliff.  She meant well - the perks of First Lady would be nice for another four years - but what about the country?  She was too dumb to think beyond the wooden desks of her one-room schoolhouse Doctor Biden mentality. 

The President left the Oval Office sans retinue, escaped without handlers, alone and waving to no one in particular until an aide caught him in mid-stride and shepherded him into the cloak room, holding him firmly by the elbow until help arrived.  'How are you this morning, Mr. President', she said. 

'Which President?', Joe replied thinking she was referring to Washington or Lincoln just honored on the three-day weekend just past, and she buzzed for help, but even White House aides needed a break and forgot in their chatter to look up at the monitors in the cafeteria which would have shown grandpa wandering down the halls.

'This is not good', the Vice President said to her staff while thinking of baby tethers and car seats, anything to keep the man in place only for a few months.  And all this concern about a wayward President took time and effort away from her own plans for her future Presidency.  'Why can't the bloody fool sit still?', she yelled to the Ladies Room mirror. 

Now, ambition in a severely limited woman is not a pretty sight, and she couldn't see how wobbly and unhinged she was becoming She cackled at everything, bullied her way onto one-on-one television interviews where she made no sense at all, just cackling and meandering until the thankful end of the hour.  Even her most ardent supporters began to question her prospects.  While they would never admit this publicly, what on earth were they doing behind such a clueless clown?

So the West Wing was a mess - a dotty, doddering President, a crazy-as-a-loon, desperately ambitious Vice President, and a dimwitted First Lady. 

In Washington nothing stays private for long, and the conservative press quickly got wind of the Kamala-Jill catfights, the growing dementia of the President, and the Goneril and Regan plotting of the Vice President to send old Joe out on the heath to die.  They had a field day, and the American public, despite fear of Donald Trump, voted No Mas and the Biden era happily and finally came to an end. 

It all goes to show that power doesn't so much corrupt but only makes men act silly; and the Grand Guignol, Punch and Judy, vaudevillian show at 1700 was a jolly affair indeed.  It all ended on January 20, 2025 with the inauguration of Donald Trump.