But it didn’t make him the unTrump, either. Moreover, his actions - or rather, inaction - regarding the Afghans left behind lacked the empathy that supposedly overflowed in him. Never was the devil to be discernible in anything he did.īut he pulled out of Afghanistan without the degree of consultation, coordination and competence that allies expected, at least of any American president not named Trump. While many fresh occupants of the Oval Office are supposed to light a few scented candles and rid the Resolute Desk of the prior occupant’s stench, Biden was supposed to perform an exorcism. And that cast its own unique shadow over - and created a special set of burdens for - Biden’s presidency. I’d wager that most of the Americans who voted excitedly for Biden were voting even more excitedly against Trump. Implicitly and explicitly, he pledged to answer Trump’s ignorance with experience, Trump’s clumsiness with dexterity, Trump’s callousness with caring, Trump’s dishonor with integrity.

I admire a great deal about Biden, but let’s be honest: He was elected president primarily because he held himself up as the antithesis of, and antidote for, Trump. Trump used to do.”Īnd nothing about Biden is ever supposed to remind anyone of Donald Trump. He said that Biden’s decision to negotiate a secret submarine deal with Australia that nullified a lucrative French arrangement reminded him “a lot of what Mr. France’s foreign minister described himself as “angry and bitter.” He called what President Biden had done “brutal.”īut those harsh adjectives (in their English translation) meant nothing next to something else that the diplomat, Jean-Yves Le Drian, uttered late last week.

Let her cry chords