It was pathetic irony that even as Joe Biden bumbled through his state of the union address Tuesday night Russians were bombarding Ukraine cities and oil prices were skyrocketing to $110 a barrel.
It’s been said before, but bears repeating: Biden is Jimmy Carter II — without the basic decency that Carter possessed.
Both have shown themselves to be weak Democrats overmatched by the challenges of the Oval Office.
Both relied on staffs long on posturing and ideology and short on results.
Both just happened to have Russians invading foreign countries on their watch, emboldened by the weak-kneed policies of both.
Both saw inflation soar, in part based on skyrocketing oil prices. Carter was mostly an unwitting bystander to it all. But Biden is aiding and abetting the oil dilemma by hamstringing U.S. production with a misguided cocktail of nixing pipelines and drilling, all to appease the far-left environmental crowd that thinks carbon fuels have no place in society.
Both Democratic presidents, separated by 40-plus years, made sure U.S. prestige was neutered by their incoherent policies.
Carter was fortunate. He left a smoking wreck of a country that his successor, Republican Ronald Reagan, was able to resurrect and thereby spare Carter the ignominy of having turned America into a third-world hovel.
Reagan had a secret weapon, and it was not his Star Wars missile defense plan. The man who made it work for Reagan was Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker.
It was Volcker, a Carter appointee re-appointed by Reagan, who rooted out inflation by allowing interest rates to skyrocket. A prime interest rate of 21.5 percent and a 10 percent unemployment rate were the strong medicine it took to choke off inflation in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
Current Fed chair Jerome Powell cannot, will not, be a Volcker repeat. First off, Powell doesn’t have the guts.
More important, Powell doesn’t have the basic economic strength and relatively low national debt that Volcker had to give him cover for the interest rate rises.
Democrats will blame inflation on the Russians, just like they do everything else wrong with this country.
But the truth is politicians of both parties have enabled a spending orgy that has this country in a position that would equate to bankruptcy for a private individual unable to create money out of thin air.
If this country is going to pull out of this nosedive, it’s going to be on Biden to man up and make some calls that are both tough and brilliant.
You say you aren’t confident he can do it. Neither am I.
I do know that releasing the equivalent of three days of oil usage from the strategic reserve is going to do squat.
Furthering political divides won’t help. Defunding police and enabling illegal immigrants won’t help.
In an all too familiar Biden moment, he concluded his speech with the cry “Go get him!”
Who or what he meant was unclear. What was clear is that Biden has maneuvered this nation into rough waters and he’s not the guy you want at the wheel to steer it to safety.
Sam Ross Jr's site 