DAVID MARCUS: The invisible hand that governed America during Biden years
When history gazes back upon the presidency of Joseph Robinette Biden, one question will stand out: Who was really running the country? Because it certainly wasn't the so-called commander in chief.
But perhaps, it wasn't really a question of who. Maybe we were governed by something much closer to an invisible hand of wokeness. Maybe we were governed by a twisted worldview, not a conspiracy or solitary figure.
It is reasonable, and almost comforting, to believe that Barack Obama or some other Democrat luminary was sitting at the center of the political universe like Vishnu, myriad arms pulling levers and flicking switches. But the reality might be far more troubling.
The reality might be that progressive politics have created a self-perpetuating deep state bureaucracy that, left unchecked, couldn't care less who sits behind the Resolute Desk.
There are a handful of behind-the-scenes power brokers, hiding from public view of late, who clearly had a lot of sway in the Biden White House: Chief of Staff Jeff Zeints, longtime ally Mike Donilon, Senior Adviser Anita Dunn, and the ever-present Susan Rice.
But in all likelihood, they were not running some textbook conspiracy theory to rule in Biden's name. In fact, the entire Biden administration looks more like a broken play in football; It really was just trying to stay on its feet.
It is telling that the front-facing cabinet members of Biden's, unlike his hotshot behind-the-scenes team, were feckless, awful and never fired for anything.
Watching our current Secretary of State Marco Rubio cross swords with Democrats in his Senate testimony this week couldn't help but remind us of someone like hapless Biden Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, sitting in those same rooms, like a scolded child unable to mount a defense for his open borders.
Or how about Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who seemed to have a special Zippo lighter designed to let him fire up conflagrations from Ukraine to the Middle East? Or Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin -- when he was available, of course -- whose Afghanistan withdrawal made the Keystone Cops look like the A Team?
For four years this "aw shucks" brigade of midwits was allowed to drive our nation off a cliff precisely because nobody was actually in charge.
When the border was a mess and Mayorkas embarrassed himself on the Hill, what would be the process for firing him? The boss is oblivious. Who would actually care enough to go after him? None of the insiders I mentioned above. It wasn't their legacy, wasn't their problem. So no accountability.
No. We were governed by a set of progressive assumptions, much like the invisible hand of the market that Adam Smith wrote about. In progressive politics the questions simply answer themselves. It is a system.
Why would Mayorkas let the southern border become a turnstile for foreign gang members? Because first and foremost, we must think of the innocent migrants, even if the cruel open borders policy is getting many of them trafficked.
Why couldn't the Biden administration back off of the hill of men playing in women's sports when everyone without pronouns on their business card knows it's absurd? Because progressive ideology dictates that the oppressed must be right.
Why was the Biden administration unable to forcefully call out antisemitism on our college campuses? Because Jews are now white-adjacent and privileged.
We were governed by a set of left-wing assumptions.
Think about what almost happened. Even if Democrats had somehow gotten Methusela Biden over the finish line, with his new cancer diagnosis, we now know we would have wound up with Kamala "I'm not taking questions at this time" Harris as president.
Could there be a better example of the fact that, to Democrats, it doesn't matter in the slightest who is actually in charge?
We do not have two functioning political parties today. We have the GOP and a Democrat Party that is like the Borg from Star Trek, it speaks with a single voice that is somehow always dead wrong.
There is a reason that we have a president. Leadership matters, and in the last 120 or so days, from securing the border to securing trade deals, President Donald Trump has exemplified just how crucial his job really is.
In retrospect, we look back on four years of Biden's presidency and ask ourselves, what the hell just happened?
What happened was a reign of woke policy agendas that flooded our border, inflated our prices, wrought war across the globe and infiltrated Catholic churches looking for fantastical right-wing extremism.
We may never know exactly what happened, but one thing we do know. It can never be allowed to happen again.
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