Biden’s final days in the Oval Office offer a perfect metaphor for everything that was wrong with his tenure

“‘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.