One reason it’s difficult for any politician, regardless of reputation, to unseat an incumbent president involves the difficulty of remaining statesmanlike while engaging in partisan politics. From the birth of the republic until the late 19th century, candidates managed this by “standing for office” while their surrogates handled the cut and thrust of day-to-day campaigning. Today’s presidential challengers enjoy no such luxury. They are expected to get out among the voters and explain how they would do a better job than the incumbent. In a time of national crisis, this must be accomplished without exploiting the emergency and appearing cynically opportunistic. Joe Biden has already committed this fatal blunder.
The former vice president has attempted to exploit the coronavirus pandemic to gain political leverage from the moment the outbreak spread to the United States. Biden has personally peddled false charges concerning the Trump administration’s response to the crisis and directed his staff to run campaign ads that deliberately distort the facts. This conduct has been so irresponsible in some cases that even news outlets whose ideological inclinations would normally render them supportive of his candidacy have taken him to task. The Washington Post, for example, awarded Biden four “Pinocchios” last Friday for promulgating deceptively edited videos that created a false impression of the president’s words:
Biden’s ad presents two separate and distinctly different examples of manipulated video…. Ultimately, the seriousness of the coronavirus outbreak, the fact that Trump had clarified his comments on the matter before the ad was released, and the blatant way the Biden camp isolated his remarks about the American Dream pushed us to Four Pinocchios. Campaigns must be willing to make their case without resorting to video manipulation.
This is by no means an isolated offense. During last Sunday’s Democratic debate, Biden leveled a charge at the Trump administration that was not merely false but also betrayed considerable ignorance about public health: “Look, the World Health Organization offered the testing kits that they have available and to give it to us now. We refused them.” In reality, there was no such offer. Kaiser Health News quotes World Health Organization (WHO) spokesperson Margaret Harris as follows: “No discussions occurred between WHO and CDC about WHO providing COVID-19 tests to the United States.” The Coronavirus Task Force also debunked Biden’s claim while explaining how such tests are evaluated.
[Interesting Read]
See Also:
(1) The Democrats have stopped laughing
(2) Joe Biden, the Manchurian Virus Candidate
(3) Despicable: Joe Biden is trying to lie his way into the White House
(4) The mysterious rise, fall and rise of gaffe-prone Joe Biden
(5) Tale of two campaigns: Chaos catapults Biden toward Trump showdown
