I suppose this has happened often enough during this administration that we probably shouldn't be all that shocked, but that doesn't mean that this behavior should be normalized.
As we have noted here multiple times in the past, It's been almost a year since Joe Biden sat down for a meeting with the members of his cabinet to discuss world affairs and get their agenda in order. That changed yesterday when the first such cabinet meeting in more than eleven months was held at the White House... sort of.
A meeting was indeed called to order, but Joe Biden's entire participation in it was comprised of his introductory remarks where he welcomed the person who would actually be chairing the meeting. That would be his wife, Jill Biden.
Dr. Jill wound up doing almost all of the talking while Joe disappeared into the background before departing. This jarring event led many observers to yet again as the same question we've been wrestling with all year.
Who is actually running the country right now?
From the NY Post:
Who’s in charge here, again?First lady Jill Biden did most of the talking Friday at the public portion of what may be President Biden’s final cabinet meeting — just hours before she hosted a large Rose Garden celebration without him.The 73-year-old first lady, widely regarded as the most powerful in over a century, was seated at the head of the Cabinet Room’s board table and read from a binder about women’s health initiatives for four-and-a-half minutes after her husband spoke for just two minutes at the top of the meeting.
Forbes was generous enough to describe the situation as "First Lady Dr. Jill Biden Joins Biden Cabinet Meeting." We have the whole spectacle on video, however, and she did a lot more than "join." Joe Biden spoke (or more correctly read from his queue cards) for all of two minutes and four seconds. Then Dr. Jill took over. I've queued up the video below so you can see for yourself. She was sitting at the head of the table, hitting all of the talking points, and everyone's attention was focused on her. She was running the meeting.
The cabinet meeting wasn't the only item on the agenda yesterday, however. There was a bit of a shindig scheduled to be held in the Rose Garden. But the First Lady ran that event from beginning to end as well. There was no sign of the President because he was already on his way back to Delaware to continue his endless vacation. In a scene that could have been plucked straight out of the pages of Alice in Wonderland, the entire press corps appeared to simply nod their heads and smile as if this were the most normal thing in the world.
No matter what you may have thought of the outcome of the 2020 elections, the fact is that we did hold an election. Not a single person voted for Jill Biden to hold any sort of official office or power over the fundamental operation of our country. And yet she is obviously the person in charge of America's government today. Are you okay with that? If the elected President is unable to discharge his duties (as clearly seems to be the case) the Founders provided us with various options to ensure the orderly transition of power, with further clarification coming from the addition of the 25th Amendment. It is impossible to imagine the authors of any of those fundamental documents writing, "If that doesn't work out, don't worry. There will be another election coming along soon enough. Let's just hope for the best, shall we?"
As the Post correctly notes, Joe Biden has been officially on vacation for two-thirds of the days of the past month. I specify "officially" because there is typically so little on his schedule each day that it's difficult to discern which days are vacation days and which are "work days" when he simply does basically nothing. Looking around that room and seeing the collection of DEI appointees for cabinet positions that Biden has assembled, it's difficult to say who - if anyone - is actually running anything anymore.
They were happy to show up and clap like trained seals for Jill Biden and she seemed to be enjoying the experience fully. How nice for her. Meanwhile, the world is on fire and the Vice President (who should have already replaced Biden under more normal circumstances) is busy campaigning while taking no questions and refusing to discuss her policy plans. This is no way to run an airline, folks. Fasten your seatbelts. We still have several months to go before we can officially say goodbye to Joe Biden and it will probably turn out to be a very rocky ride.
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