Biden and the Competency Crisis

Why Noticing is not Enough

-1

Last night, MAGA Republicans pounced on Biden’s awkward debate performance despite the consensus of credible experts that his age does not affect his Presidency. Biden’s age may not be an argument against him. Instead, his moments of weakness urge us to turn to care and empathy, not insurrection against him.

Journalists, donors and Obama allies are being seduced by deep-rooted bigotries. When Republicans argue that someone is a better President because they are smarter, healthier, or more beautiful, they are playing on tropes from Jim Crow, Apartheid, and Nazi Germany. Attempts to profile him for his age are deeply unsettling. By proudly showing his age, our president is representing the unarmed black men profiled by police, the transwomen who simply want to use the bathroom of their choice, and the hardworking teachers unions fighting against crony capitalism. They are exploiting a racist, sexist, transphobic and ableist hierarchy that undermines all of the progress the Democratic Party has made in the past century.

We must reject the bigoted conception that a president’s role is to make unilateral changes to our executive agencies or foreign policy, rather than deferring to experts.

1 

Despite last night’s debate, Biden won’t be replaced except in the unlikely case he quits. The structure and morality of the Democratic party created our gerontocracy and will continue to govern it.

The Democratic Party is systemically organized around protecting people from inegalitarian truths at every level: genetic, economic, social, and political. Being a left-wing party, the primary emotion of the Democratic party is pity. The default reaction to a failing individual, social circle, or demographic group is to ask “how have healthy, successful people wronged them?”. Noticing differences is uncomfortable to them. It raises a lump in their throats. They have circles upon circles of psychological misdirections prepared to justify this discomfort.

My first viral piece in Tablet linked this emotion to the managerial structures of left-wing organizations. When making tough decisions is uncomfortable, procedural egalitarianism dominates, despite the costs and inefficiencies of bureaucracy. This creates an anti-meritocracy in which envy is valorized and honoring differences in competence is discouraged. 

Outside of exceptional circumstances, managerial structures do not operate by stomping out inegalitarian truths. They do not say that demographic differences don’t exist. They instead perform a moral misdirection: creating excuses to detach predictable reality from what is good or just. “Systemic racism” and “patriachy” do not deny race and sex differences, but instead explain them by moving the blame. If you follow the blame, you understand the distorting effects of left-wing managerialism. 

Some have claimed that the left-wing pundit class noticing Biden’s debate failures is evidence that they will replace him. Certainly, Biden won’t be replaced if no one is allowed to notice his faults. But there is a wide sea between noticing failures and accepting the moral implications of those failures. This is both because of the left-wing psychological framework and because of the mediating structure of left-wing power. 

The deflection is already beginning.