Biden’s speech stirs up sense of déjà vu –
same old lies disguised as new promises
By Scott Ritter
August 21, 2020 "Information
Clearing House" - One speech, well
written and read well, does not a president
make. At the end of the day, the Democrats are
putting forward a wolf in sheep’s clothes, who
is peddling the same worn-out lies disguised as
new promises.
Joe Biden delivered his acceptance speech as
the nominee of the Democratic Party to face off
against Donald Trump in the 2020 Presidential
election with all the pomp and circumstance that
the Covid-19 pandemic would allow, speaking to a
television audience from a podium set up on the
stage of an empty theater.
Gone forever is the adjective “presumptive”;
by accepting the nomination, Joe is now
officially the leader of his party through the
first week in November and, should he prevail in
that election, for at least four years, should
his health and advancing years permit.
That last fact was the elephant in every
living room in America that had tuned in to
watch Biden deliver his speech. Over the course
of his 47-year career in politics, Joe Biden has
made more than his fair share of verbal gaffes.
What was once chalked up to youthful exuberance,
and later a quirky manifestation of a “direct”
style, has recently been highlighted by his
political opponents as the inevitable decline of
a 77-year old brain that might be better off
being led off to pasture than saddled up for one
more charge into the breach. “Would he, or
wouldn’t he” was the question on everyone’s
mind, wondering if Joe would stumble in his
delivery, ending his presidential bid before it
even started.
He did not.
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In fact, Joe Biden did much better than that,
delivering a masterfully written address with the
kind of energy and passion that should make those
watching believe that he actually meant what he
said, and was capable of following up his words with
deeds. Every syllable uttered exuded the subliminal
message, “Vote for me.” His loyal base—the
same which secured Hillary Clinton the popular vote
in the 2016 election—certainly loved the
presentation, calling it “the speech of his life.”
But Joe has been alive for a long time, and
American politics have an elephant-like tendency for
remembering the past while considering the present
and contemplating the future. Biden spent a
considerable amount of time attacking the policies
and character of the man he is seeking to unseat,
going after President Trump by name and reputation.
Under normal circumstances, such a tactic would bode
well, given the reality of Trump’s record as a Chief
Executive and a human being over the course of the
past three-plus years. From Trump’s muted response
to the Charlestown marches of the Ku Klux Klan and
white supremacists, to the Trump administration’s
fumbled actions regarding the management of the
national Covid-19 response, Biden’s speech writers
were given a plethora of material to work with, most
if not all of which hit home to some degree.
If Joe Biden was living in a political vacuum, he
might be able to throw stones at will when attacking
the record of the current resident of 1600
Pennsylvania Avenue. But when one resides in a large
glass house 47 years in the making, throwing stones
is not the wisest of strategies. For every policy
that Biden claims he will improve on, the question
must be asked why had he not acted on it in his
previous life as a senior senator or as vice
president of the United States?
For every dig he made about Trump and racism,
Biden needs to escape the shadow of the 1994 Crime
Bill he helped write. For every comment uttered
ostensibly in support of the US military, Biden
needs to deal with his vote in favor of the US-led
invasion and occupation of Iraq.
Biden’s speech was long on rhetoric, and short on
detail, especially when it came to defining the
specific policies he would undertake to save America
from the scourge of the Trump presidency. Instead,
anyone watching Biden deliver his acceptance speech
would soon be struck by a sense of déjà vu, watching
a tired old politician deliver the worn-out lies,
the wolf disguised as a sheep.
Biden opened his speech referencing an icon of
the American civil rights movement and closed by
quoting an Irish poet. Given that this was “the
speech” of Biden’s “political life”, the greatest
challenge for anyone who watched this speech is,
once the platitudes have ceased flowing from the
mouths of the partisan political talking heads on
CNN, MSNBC and elsewhere, is to name either of the
cited individuals, or to delineate at least five of
the 20 policy initiatives Biden outlined in his
speech.
The fact of the matter is that all but the most
fanatic of Biden supporters would be challenged to
do so, because the reality is that, for all the
hoopla surrounding its flawless delivery and flowery
prose, the speech itself was eminently
forgettable–no one will be plucking quotes from this
address to challenge the gravitas and meaning of the
words carved on either the Lincoln or Jefferson
memorials.
It was a decent speech, well delivered. But it’s
greatest detriment was that it was Joe Biden
delivering it, a man with a 47-year political
history that cannot simply be swept under a rug
while his political handlers seek to roll out a “new
and improved” model. At the end of the day, it
is the same old Joe. And, even though he did a good
job of reading words written by someone else off of
a teleprompter for a television audience, that
simply may not be good enough come November.
Scott Ritter is a former US
Marine Corps intelligence officer and author of
'SCORPION KING: America's Suicidal Embrace of
Nuclear Weapons from FDR to Trump.' He served in the
Soviet Union as an inspector implementing the INF
Treaty, in General Schwarzkopf’s staff during the
Gulf War, and from 1991-1998 as a UN weapons
inspector. Follow him on Twitter @RealScottRitter -
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