This column recently advised President Joe Biden to stop speaking in public,
at least when the topic is important. Mr. Biden's habit of making ill-
considered spontaneous remarks argues for carefully crafted statements of
policy. Ideally, the President would take special pains to avoid off-the-cuff
comments about nuclear-armed regimes. It now appears that some people in the
White House agree with this column.

Unfortunately the President is not among them. Carol Lee, Peter Nicholas,
Kristen Welker and Courtney Kube of NBC News report:

Faced with a worsening political predicament, President Joe Biden is
pressing aides for a more compelling message and a sharper strategy
while bristling at how they've tried to stifle the plain-speaking
persona that has long been one of his most potent assets.

Readers who have tried to diagram Biden sentences may not entirely agree that
the President is plain-spoken, and some may even question whether his public
conversation amounts to a "potent asset." But the NBC report offers an
intriguing picture of the Biden White House, informed in large part by
anonymous sources:

. . . Biden is unhappy about a pattern that has developed inside the
West Wing. He makes a clear and succinct statement--only to have aides
rush to explain that he actually meant something else. The so-called
clean-up campaign, he has told advisers, undermines him and smothers
the authenticity that fueled his rise. Worse, it feeds a Republican
talking point that he's not fully in command.

The issue came to a head when Biden ad-libbed during a speech in Poland
that Russian President Vladimir Putin "cannot remain in power." Within
minutes, Biden's aides tried to walk back his comments, saying he hadn't
called for Putin's removal and that U.S. policy was unchanged. Biden
was furious that his remarks were being seen as unreliable, arguing that
he speaks genuinely and reminding his staff that he's the one who is
president.

Asked about the staff's practice of clarifying Biden's remarks, the
official said: "We don't say anything that the president doesn't want
us to say."

What on earth are we to make of this? Publicly introducing the subject of
regime change for a country that not only has WMD but in fact one of the
world's largest supplies of such arms should never be a spur-of-the-moment
decision. Beyond the policy substance, if this report is accurate it appears
only to confirm suspicions that Mr. Biden is not fully in charge. The people
executing the "clean-up campaign" all serve at the pleasure of the President.
If he doesn't want such a campaign, he can fire them. This column was hoping
that the clean-ups were happening at the direction of the President after he
recognized his errors, which is consistent with the last quotation in the
preceding passage. But the anger attributed to Mr. Biden suggests that the
White House staff is not following his directions. How many of Mr. Biden's
predecessors had to remind staff who the President was?

The NBC report proceeds through a litany of Biden disappointments, but the
story reminds that the President has logged one very significant achievement
in the area of public relations. Mr. Biden has persuaded a good many media
folk to accept the economic fairy tale he's been telling since the start of
his presidency. Even though the economy had been roaring back for months when
he took office, the NBC crew reports:

Any assessment of Biden's performance needs to take into account the
epic challenges he faced from the start.

"They came in with the most daunting set of challenges arguably since
Franklin D. Roosevelt, only to then be hit by a perfect storm of crises,
from Ukraine to inflation to the supply chain to baby formula," said
Chris Whipple, the author of a book about White House chiefs of staff
who is now writing a book about the Biden presidency. "What's next?
Locusts?"

Biden wonders the same thing.

"I've heard him say recently that he used to say about President Obama's
tenure that everything landed on his desk but locusts, and now he
understands how that feels," a White House official said.

Amid a rolling series of calamities, Biden's feeling lately is that he
just can't catch a break. "Biden is frustrated. If it's not one thing,
it's another," said a person close to the president.

Media spin is one thing, but Mr. Biden believing his own spin seems to be at
the root of many of the nation's current challenges. Despite the smartly
rebounding economy when he took office, Mr. Biden demanded and received from
Congressional Democrats a $1.9 trillion "rescue" plan, while dismissing the
risks.

Looking back now at the inflation debacle Mr. Biden helped to create, the
Washington Post's Mike Madden and Rachel Siegel recall the events of early
2021:

In the State Dining Room of the White House on Feb. 5, President Biden
argues that the U.S. economy faces a bigger risk from doing too little
to fight the downturn than doing too much. His administration had been
pushing a large stimulus plan intended to reduce unemployment, inject
new firepower into the anemic job market and quickly grow the economy.
"If we make these investments now, with interest rates at historic lows,
we'll generate more growth, higher incomes, a stronger economy, and our
nation's finances will be in a stronger position as well," Biden says.
"So, the way I see it: The biggest risk is not going too big, if we go--
it's if we go too small."

The not small spending blowout was enacted in March and for many months
afterward, Mr. Biden failed to grasp what was happening in the U.S. economy.
The Posties report:

On July 19, 2021, President Biden played down the risk of persistent
inflation, telling reporters that price hikes "are expected to be
temporary."

Even now, close to a year later, does the President understand the problem
that occurs when Washington stokes consumer demand while simultaneously
discouraging producers from supplying goods and services? According to the
NBC report:

Rep. Stephanie Murphy, D-Fla., said the White House has failed to put
forward what she called an "intellectually honest" plan to combat
inflation--a burden that ranks first among Americans' economic concerns,
polling indicates. A bill the House passed to crack down on alleged gas
price gouging isn't an answer, she said.

"If I sound frustrated, it's because I hear from my constituents,"
Murphy said. "They're struggling. This is not a time for political
games. It's not the time for finding bogeymen."

--
show trial

noun [ C ]
a trial organized by a government in order to have an effect on public
opinion and reduce political opposition, and not in order to find the
truth