By Hank Beckman –
Wednesday’s vice presidential debate gave much of the country its first look at the person who, if the polls are accurate this time, could well be the first female president of the United States.
Whether you were turned off by her condescending smirk at every other utterance by Vice President Mike Pence or think she is the latest star gifted upon us by the Democrats and their publicists in the mainstream media, part of your reaction to her performance must calculate whether or not she is presidential material.
No honest person can deny that should Biden-Harris prevail Nov. 3, sooner or later Harris has an excellent chance of becoming president. Either some medical problem will force Joe Biden from office, or Harris could become president in 2024 when he retires. Because no one is going to accept a president that will be 82 before he takes the oath for his second term in office.
Mainstream media steadfastly avoid mentioning the obvious signs of Biden’s mental deterioration and will no doubt continue that practice until election day, but we’ve all seen the Internet videos that confirm that he isn’t the man he was even a few years ago.
How many times can he be recorded losing his train of thought in mid-sentence before even his supporters face the fact that he’s at an age where things start to fall apart rapidly.
His doctor’s report claims that he is “healthy and vigorous 77-year-old,” and fully capable of handling the duties of the presidency.
But he also had two brain surgeries for aneurysms more than 30 years ago, has an irregular heartbeat and will be 78 by the time he takes office. The World Bank stats indicate that the average lifespan of a white male in America is 78.6 years. The actuarial tables are what they are.
It’s not the first time the health of a president or presidential candidate has been cause for concern. But most of the time the candidate or president’s handlers were able to keep the details out of the media, unless it was as serious as Dwight Eisenhower’s heart attacks; or Woodrow Wilson suffering a stroke.
Anyone familiar with the history of the Second World War—and particularly the Yalta Conference—knows that Franklin Roosevelt should never have run for a fourth term. He really shouldn’t have run for a third term, but I’ll be generous and note that it was a critical time on the world stage that called for unusual measures. (Well, he never should have been elected in the first place, but let’s stay on topic here)
It doesn’t speak well for Democratic operatives of that era that they covered up the fact that FDR was a dying man, suffering from congestive heart failure.
The only reason it didn’t turn out to be a complete disaster for the country was that FDR at least had the good sense to dump Vice President Henry Wallace and replace him with Harry Truman on the 1944 presidential ticket. Whatever legitimate criticisms can be made about the Truman administration, a Wallace presidency in the early stages of the Cold War would have been a disaster that we don’t even want to contemplate.
Democrats and their allies in media again put the country at risk by covering up not only John Kennedy’s womanizing, but his many health problems and medications he was taking to combat Addisons Disease and chronic back pain.
While mainstream media have essentially acted as Biden’s press agents, in this era he just doesn’t have the luxury of hiding his mental deterioration from the American people. We have Fox News, talk radio and the Internet that are only too happy to point out his latest verbal gaffe.
So if it’s a given that electing Joe Biden gives Harris a huge boost toward the presidency, an honest look at her debate performance reveals that her only real argument against Pence was that he was being mean to the girl. Mr. Vice President, I’m speaking. That’s all you got?
Apparently so, because the rest of her performance was replete with falsehoods; let’s count them.
First, she drug out the oft-repeated calumny that Trump had referred to neo-Nazis and white nationalists as “very fine people,” in regards to the demonstration at Charlottesville that turned ugly and cost one woman her life.
All one has to do is Google the phrase, “very fine people on both sides” to know that this is complete nonsense and that the President noted there were good and bad people on both sides of the demonstration, which is factually correct.
“I’m not talking about the neo-Nazis or white nationalists,” he said. “They should be condemned totally.”
Second, there is the charge that he referred to the Corona Virus as a hoax, again easily refuted by a Google search.
Trump was speaking of the virus in the context of it being a media hoax to attack his administration, in the same way that collusion and impeachment were hoaxes.
“This is their new hoax,” he said.
Third, there was the laughable charge that pulling out of the Iran nuclear deal had made America less safe.
It’s kind of hard to square this with Trump being nominated three times for the Nobel Peace Prize for brokering peace treaties between Israel and the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain.
He’s also the first president in memory that hasn’t either instigate military action on foreign soil or contributed to an existing conflict. If this is making us less safe, Harris has to explain how.
Fourth, she claimed that Trump dissolved the pandemic response office at the White House, leaving the country vulnerable to COVID-19.
The Washington Post March 20, 2020 edition contains an article by Tim Morrison, Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute and former national security advisor, that effectively refutes the charge.
“No, the White House didn’t ‘dissolve’ its pandemic response office,” the headline reads. “I was there.”
Morrison writes that the National Security Council office responsible for pandemic response had become bloated, pointing out that former Obama administration officials and congressional committees agreed with the assessment.
While the office was streamlined during the Trump administration, Morrison maintains that the biodefense team is intact and, if anything, more efficient.
Fifth, she denied that either her or Joe Biden had ever called for the end of fracking.
Again, all one has to do is Google “Joe Biden calls for banning fracking” or the same phrase with Kamala Harris, and her denial is seen for the nonsense that it is. It makes a body wonder if the Biden-Harris ticket is that delusional, that confident that media won’t hold them accountable, or that contemptuous of the intelligence of their voters; maybe all three.
Finally, there is the clumsy attempt at a history lesson involving Abraham Lincoln’s supposed reluctance to fill a Supreme Court vacancy because it was only weeks before an election. Harris claimed that old “Honest Abe,” didn’t make the nomination because he felt the American people had a right to make their feelings known.
The truth is that the Senate was in recess at the time and although Lincoln could have named someone to fill the seat of the deceased Roger B. Taney, there was no possible way for his pick for the court to have been confirmed.
snopes.com, a fact-checking site that no one would ever confuse with being right wing, could find no evidence that Lincoln ever claimed he didn’t think it was appropriate to nominate a new justice until after the election.
If lack of honesty isn’t enough to give one pause at the thought of Kamala Harris sitting in Lincoln’s Chair, next week’s column will give you the cold sweats.
