The Incompetence Of The Biden Administration Should Not Surprise You.
What is surprising is how fast the talent level of the Democrat Party cratered.
This past week, the most untalented White House Press Secretary ever, Karine Jean-Pierre, bragged that the Biden Administration was “the most diverse administration ever, not even in modern politics but ever.” It is also the most incompetent. Ever. You can see her February 17 proclamation here:
At the outset of his Presidency, Biden’s incompetence was on full display for anyone but the most partisan to witness. Detailing all of the examples of the Administration’s failures is behind the scope of this article, but the history of the past two (2) years has demonstrated time and time again that Biden has not placed capable people in positions of power. By way of one example, his stewardship of the Country’s withdrawal from Afghanistan was labeled as “chaotic,” even by friendly MainStreamMedia outlets. Similarly, despite his claims to the contrary, the Country has still not recovered all of the jobs lost during the pandemic, and is well behind where it would have been if normal job growth had continued unabated. Just about everywhere one looks, the Biden Administration is failing and the American people are suffering because of those failures.
This is not surprising considering the fact that Joe Biden was not qualified for the job in the first place. For those of us that have followed almost his entire career, he is known as a below average politician, with little accomplishments during his decades in government. What he is capable of is getting elected in Delaware and rising up the ranks of the Democrat establishment. After all, he often chaired powerful Senate Committees and was elevated to the Vice Presidency before running successfully for President in 2020 after several prior failed attempts. But getting elected and climbing the ladder of Democrat Politics does not qualify you to be President, at least not today. Thus, no one should be surprised that Biden is a failed President.
However, the totality and breadth of the failure should be surprising. A President is an executive, so he or she is not making the day to day governing decisions, the Cabinet and other high level government executives are. One would have supposed that surely some of them obtained their positions due to competence. We are now at a point where we must accept the fact that this likely is not the case because the Democrat Party currently, and for some time now, produces nothing but people like Biden who can only get elected and climb the Democrat leadership ladder, but do little else. Labelling all Republicans evil and attacking non-existent “white supremacy” may get you elected, but it does nothing to help you accomplish concrete things once you are.
One of the ways the Party got itself to this place was through the identity politics that Karine Jean-Pierre recently espoused. Anyone paying attention knows the Democrats for some time have favored politics over ability. What you might not have known is the extent to which Democrats are willing to go to promote people based on such illegal characteristics such as race, gender, and sexual orientation. What Biden’s inept Administration has revealed is that it is so overwhelmingly that the Party can no longer attract people with even basic competence at governing.
Those of us in the legal profession were provided with a sneak preview of this phenomenon. A little and background is needed. Traditionally, Presidents would clear all judicial nominees with the American Bar Association (the “ABA”). The ABA would rate each nominee as “well qualified,” “qualified,” and “not qualified.” If a proposed nominee received a grade of “not qualified,” by convention, that person would not be nominated. This system worked well for decades until the Left began taking over American institutions. The ABA was no exception.
Over time, the ABA developed a reputation of scoring Republican nominees unfairly, grading “well qualified” nominees as “qualified” or worse, preventing a person from being nominated by unfairly labelling them “not qualified.” As a result, the George W. Bush Administration discontinued the practice of having the ABA rate his judicial nominees. In 2009, Barack Obama resumed the practice. However, despite the fact that the ABA clearly favored Democrats and was Left leaning, it determined that several of Obamas nominees were “not qualified.” In fact, the association’s judicial vetting committee opposed 14 of the roughly 185 nominees during Obama’s first term. Almost all of the prospects given poor ratings were women or members of a minority group.
At the time, many Democrat leaning groups claimed that the ABA was being racist and sexist and had an outright bias against Democrats. This notion is far fetched at best. Plainly Obama was nominating people that were not qualified and even the Obama supporting ABA could not tolerate such unqualified applicants. Indeed, if anything, it probably allowed some “not qualified” individuals to be seated.
It was plain to any rational observer that Obama was putting politics, and identity politics specifically, over competence. Besides being illegal under the Fourteenth Amendment and Civil Rights Act of 1964, it is unwise policy because it rewards people who are incapable of performing the task for which he or she has been nominated.
What we have learned and what is worse, is that it also encourages people to focus their energy on immutable characteristics such as race and gender to the exclusion of abilities that make the more capable of performing whatever task in the government he or she is charged with. To wit, Obama could have nominated qualified women or persons of color, but he chose to favor unqualified ones over qualified ones. Thus, he rewarded people not for hard work but for being the most radical and partisan, and radical and partisan in favor of qualities such as race and gender and sexual orientation. Ironically, Thomas Sowell warned us of this phenomenon under questioning from then Senator Joe Biden in 1987 testifying in favor of Judge Bork’s elevation to the Supreme Court:
If this continues over time, identity characteristics apparently will eliminate competence entirely. This appears to be where we are. It borders on the fantastic how quickly this transformation has occurred, but the Biden Administration demonstrates it plainly on a near daily basis. Today, at almost every level of the Federal government we see incompetence at levels never witnessed in American history. This is because the party in power rewards identity over competence to the point where competence is barely considered any longer or present.
And it is only getting worse. One of Biden’s first actions when sworn in was to cease having the ABA vet his judicial nominees. The next time you hear the Administration brag about how many judges Biden has nominated, consider how many would not have been seated based on America’s traditional merit system. Then consider the fact that it is not just the judicial branch that operates in this fashion. Your life might not improve, but at least you will understand why the Federal government is failing.