ROGER KIMBALL: On Not Saying “I Told You So.”
Don’t you hate when people say “I told you so?”
It’s especially galling when they’re right.
So, I won’t say “I told you so” to the anti-Trump sorority who had their knickers in a twist over Trump’s “character” (and here) while Joe Biden sat in his basement gibbering vacantly while counting the pelf he and his family had raked in from the Chinese and other influence seekers.
“Oh, but at least Joe Biden acts like an adult. At least he will reestablish an atmosphere of normality in The White House.”
Did you think so? I didn’t.
The problem with trying to assess the Biden administration is that none of our usual metrics work any longer.
Biden’s poll numbers are panic-inducing.
The last I checked, his approval rating was 30 percent. Thirty.
Still, the free fall we are witnessing is too rapid for our usual instruments to register accurately.
Signs were there from the beginning, from before the beginning, as some of us were pointing out.
But I suppose the signs became incontrovertible when Biden presided over our disastrous leave-taking in Afghanistan last summer about this time.
Overnight, we made the Taliban the best-armed terrorist group in the world, bequeathing them billions in state-of-the-art U.S. weaponry.
We also stood by and did nothing after 13 U.S. servicemen were murdered by irate locals.
“Never,” wrote one commentator at the time, “have I witnessed a greater, swifter collapse of competence than what I have seen with the U.S. evacuation of Afghanistan.”
Afghanistan was a line in the sand.
Since then it has been one disaster after the next.
So many it is hard to keep track.
Our southern border: essentially gone.
Inflation: at a 40-year high.
Gas prices: at historic highs.
The economy: stuttering to a standstill or worse. We just had two quarters of negative growth, i.e., we are in a recession.
Our foreign policy: a joke.
And the punchline to that joke?
The most recent one involves Joe Biden’s affectionate little fist bump with the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman on his recent visit.
It wasn’t so long ago that Biden describe MBS as a “pariah.”
Even a few weeks ago, he said he would not meet with the smooth but deadly de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia.
But that was before the reality of high gas prices in the United States swam into the consciousness of the leader of the free world.
Biden came away from that tour with—nothing.
Plus: “I almost feel sorry for the Democrats (emphasis on the adverb). They are saddled—rather, they have saddled themselves—with a disaster. They pushed this corrupt, incompetent, senile fool on us. Now they must pay the price.”
They’re paying a price. But ultimately it’s America that’s paying the price.