This is an absolutely terrible look for Biden. That "no comment" response is rotten, and he does not have his "old, fumbling man prone to gaffes and perhaps in mental decline" excuse to fall back on. A person can fit the quoted profile without being an indifferent and heartless aristocrat who only has egalitarian and empathetic values when the right type of cameras are rolling.
I believe that, if Biden had initially responded by saying something that attempted to be empathetic and concerned with the Maui wildfires, but accidentally expressed a sentiment or used a word construed as offensive, incompetent, oafish, or otherwise insufficient; that would have been a better result. Why? Because, even if his comment would be widely mocked or condemned, and even if such a pushback would be completely deserved on his part, then at least he would have tried to show empathy and concern at all.
But by both being the president and saying "no comment" to this inquiry, this means that in this exchange, Biden was too cowardly to even make that risk of answering in a way that the public would consider either "excellent" or "horrible"; or to answer in a glib, diplomatic fashion that would not move the needle much. Instead, he evaded any possibility of any of those outcomes, and showed his own weakness when it came to a matter concerning a part of his own nation. Just because Hawaii is a far off archipelago somewhere in the ocean does not mean it does not affect the United States of America, and that's why the President, of all people, should give a crap. {No, I don't mean the President of All People, mind you, but if there was such a position, his literal job description would require him to care about the fire disasters in Maui. Same goes for the US President.)
And, if the United States has a president so weak that he cannot muster time out of his beach relaxation schedule to care about the plights of Maui citizens and the death tolls of its fires, then that does not inspire confidence in the USA as a nation. "Yeah, there's a fire or something going on in Maui and people are dying, but I'm just trying to relax on the beach."
The inquiry was not a fight or a confrontation. But Biden backed down because he was fearful of any degree of resistance at all, and he was likely not prepared for such at the moment. And that is what a coward does. And a coward who occupies the presidency of the United States of America is someone who, by his nature, will not inspire widespread confidence.
But one man who was not a coward was Abraham Lincoln. As a matter of fact, he was
one of the best wrestlers in what is today known as the American Midwest. Reading that made me further recognize how excellent and iconic of a president Lincoln was. Therefore, while it is clearly not the only thing and that this discourse deserves to afford more complexity than this, someone who is a great physical fighter (or was in their younger years) would more likely make a better president than someone who is not. Because, with fighting being a type of sport, and sport being a microcosmic and controlled and civil expression of warfare, such experience can and will certainly aid in being president, which puts them on the nation's ultimate front lines for a stretch of four or eight years. It is no coincidence that every president except Donald Trump previously had either political or military experience. To name a few with prior military experience: George Washington, Andrew Jackson, William Henry Harrison, Zachary Taylor, Ulysses S. Grant, Dwight Eisenhower.
If physical fight is not one's forte, then perhaps oratory and debate will do. And that is fine. Debate and verbal persuasion are a very important part of convincing the public of one's presidential or otherwise political worth, and an important tactic in receiving votes. And someone who backs down from expected debates such as these often do not do so from a place of confidence or self-assuredness, and perhaps more so from a place of insecure self-preservation. As in, "If I say no to this, then I won't screw up while in the debate. Therefore, my opponents won't be given more material."
But the thing is, by not showing up at all, one might as well have given the opponents and critics free gold and free ammunition to suggest that they are scared and insipid and spineless. This plays into why so many people in the NBA world
hates Ben Simmons.
While a good president does not have to pick every fight under the sun (i.e. Barack Obama vs. Ted Nugent is a pretty one-sided feud), (s)he needs to be able to confront social matters, important events, and historic occurrences with grace, integrity, and courage. And by Biden saying that he had no comment, he cared too much about saving his own skin while expressing indifference toward the burning flesh of his own citizens.
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nypost.com
www.civilbeat.org
