“‘This is the way the world ends,” T.S. Eliot famously wrote.
“Not with a bang but a whimper.”
He might have been talking about Joe Biden’s presidency.
As he prepares to slink out the door, Biden’s final days in the Oval Office offer a perfect metaphor for everything that was wrong with his tenure.
He pardoned his convicted-criminal son after vowing not to and his mass commutations included one for a judge convicted of taking kickbacks to send juveniles to for-profit detention facilities.
The judge was in Scranton, Pa., meaning Biden even betrayed distraught parents in his hometown.
How’s that for a legacy?
His most recent dereliction fits another pattern.
Just as he paid no attention to raging inflation, the open border and the decline of America’s global standing, Biden has gone missing as swarms of drones spark fears among millions of Americans on the East Coast.
Biden has said nothing, Vice President Kamala Harris has disappeared since losing the election and the White House offers only bland assurances that there’s nothing to worry about.
But asked who is behind the noisy, bright and large drone presence expanding night after night, the administration says it doesn’t know.
In other words, we don’t know and we don’t really care, but trust us anyway.
Sorry, it’s too late in the game for that, especially when drones forced the White Plains airport to close runways Friday night.
Even the usually somnolent Gov. Hochul stirred to demand answers.
Contrast of leadership
Only a fool would deny that something unprecedented is happening, and it’s doubly worrisome when the blanket assurances come from Alejandro Mayorkas, head of Homeland Security.
Recall it was Mayorkas who insisted repeatedly, under oath, that “the border is secure” even as more than 10 million unvetted migrants poured across.
So when he says “don’t worry,” we should worry.
The incident also illustrates why there is so much excitement about Donald Trump’s return.
Politics is ultimately about contrasts, and there is an extraordinarily stark contrast between the current and next president.
It goes far beyond the usual changing of the guard.
Although Biden is just four years older than Trump, it feels as if the torch is being passed to a new generation.
And that joy has switched sides.
Action at ‘MAGA Largo’
That’s certainly the vibe at Mar-a-Lago, or, as reader John Peter Zavez calls it, MAGA Largo.
With a steady stream of well-wishers, tech moguls, captains of industry, donors and media arriving daily, the historic estate is living up to its designation as the Winter White House.
The impression of a president ready to hit the ground running is underscored by Trump’s business-like approach to shaping his administration.
His lightning-speed rollout of his Cabinet and other top picks is supplanting the usual thumb-sucking post-mortems about the campaign.
There’s little point in dwelling on the past when the future is taking shape so quickly.
The announcement by FBI chief Christopher Wray that he will resign reflects the momentum.
He could have fought to finish his 10-year term, but it would have been futile.
And for what purpose?
Wray was a deeply flawed leader of the troubled FBI, but he at least got the point — there’s a new sheriff in Washington.
Trump, with a landslide win in the Electoral College and victory in the popular vote, expressed the futility of looking backwards.
In an interview with Time magazine for its issue naming him Person of the Year, he was asked what he thought were Harris’ worst mistakes.
Without hesitation, he answered: “Taking the assignment. Number one, because you have to know what you’re good at.”
Next question!
His answer could be applied to the entire Democratic Party.
It proved to be terrible at governing, with the so-called moderates signing on to the most radical agenda in US history.
The tail wagged the dog right out of power.
Here they go again
And here they go again.
Many congressional Dems are saying they will boycott Trump’s inauguration.
That’s a repeat of 2017, when more than 50 of them failed to show up for the transfer of power.
Some even made threats to impeach him, a promise they kept when they won the House majority two years later.
Axios reports that 13 Dems have pledged to stay away this time, and 20 others are undecided.
My hope is that sanity will prevail and the movement will fizzle.
Again, what’s the argument for staying away?
The public spoke with a clear voice, so those who boycott are proving they haven’t learned their lesson and are giving voters another reason to consign the party to a long sentence on the sidelines.
Look to France
Dems should take a cue from the foreign leaders who embraced Trump in Paris.
French President Emanuel Macron invited him to the reopening of the Notre-Dame Cathedral while Biden stayed in Washington.
Trump had a friendly chat there with Jill Biden and upbeat meetings with European leaders, especially Italy’s Giorgia Meloni.
Newsweek said of Trump’s meeting with Great Britain’s Prince William that the prince “turned into a fanboy.”
All those encounters were a far cry from the cold shoulders Trump often got in his first term, so his domestic critics would be wise to knock off the juvenile antics.
They could also take a lesson from Eric Adams.
The decision by Gotham’s Dem mayor to meet with Tom Homan, the incoming tough-as-nails border czar, about the plan for mass deportations of illegal immigrants was wise and instructive.
Although Adams’ motive is somewhat suspect given that he was indicted by the Department of Justice, the move also reflects his desperation to fix the terrible mess created by the Biden-Harris open border.
New York taxpayers have shelled out billions of dollars for a problem the White House created, and Adams claims he was targeted by prosecutors because he complained the president hadn’t done enough to help pay for an invasion of over 200,000 illegal crossers to New York, not a few of whom committed crimes here.
As Adams put it in a TV interview, “We now have an administration we can work with.”
There is also a political lesson for Dems in J.D. Vance’s invitation for Daniel Penny to join him and Trump at Saturday’s Army-Navy game.
Penny was acquitted after being unfairly prosecuted in the death of Jordan Neely, the psychotic subway rider who threatened to kill other passengers.
A former Marine like Vance, Penny has become a folk hero for his selfless courage in protecting himself and other riders and for prevailing in the disgraceful race-based case.
It’s also not a small point that he and Trump have a common foe in Alvin Bragg, who prosecuted them.
Both cases brought by the Manhattan DA were devoid of fairness and displayed how Bragg corrupts his office to target people who don’t fit his far-left politics.
For now, he’s the face of the Democrats’ brand.
Good luck defending that.
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