Effortless

Is this the Joe Biden you expected as president? Well, it's the Joe Biden you've got.

They’ve been so frantic over at Fox News, they put calls for President Biden to hold a press conference on a loop and played them non-stop around the clock.  That’s how much drum-pounding has been going on – Biden hasn’t held a press conference!  Not one!  Hannity has been all over it.  Tucker Smarmason, him too.  Laura “I can’t wait to get off the air so I can have a martini” Ingraham, too.

Every right-wing pundit online and on the radio.  Jonah Goldberg.  Michael Savage.  Where is Biden hiding?  Why won’t he come out of his bunker?  Does he think he can be president and not answer questions?

Well, Joe Biden emerged today, and after giving brief opening remarks about his new goal for vaccinating 200 million Americans by his 100th day in office and a few other things, he took questions for almost an hour. 

He didn’t even look like he was trying very hard.  They hit him with questions about immigration right off the bat.  Unaccompanied minors.  Crisis on the border.  Actual facts, real statistics, that’s what he gave them.  There’s been a 28 percent increase in illegal border crossings since January.  During the same time in 2019, the last year before COVID, under Trump the increase was 31 percent.  It’s said they’re coming because I’m a nice guy, I’m a decent man.  Does anybody suggest there was a 31 percent increase under Trump because he was a nice guy?  And he was doing good things at the border?  The reason they’re coming is that it’s the time they can travel with the least likelihood of dying on the way because of the heat in the desert, number one, and number two, because of the circumstances in country.  He spent almost 19 minutes talking about immigration.

He took on the filibuster: twelve minutes.  He confronted questions about China:  nine minutes.  Infrastructure: four minutes.  Economic recovery: three minutes.  Two minutes on voting rights, a minute on guns, a half minute on climate change.  He glanced down at his notes at times, but he knew what he was talking about.  It was blatantly obvious.

You know what he wasn’t asked about?  COVID.  You know why?  Because every reporter in that room knew he’s been doing a great job on the worst problem this country faces, and they wanted to ask questions that had at least a small “gotcha” chance.

Didn’t happen.  He was relaxed, open, thoughtful, factual.  He didn’t look or sound resentful of the press or angry at the questions he was asked. He looked and sounded like he enjoys being president.  He looked and sounded like he’s pretty good at it.  He even looked like he knows it.

Maybe, just maybe, a lifetime spent in Washington D.C. as a lawmaker and a politician and eight years as vice president to a competent, upstanding president helped a little.  

But he made the whole thing look effortless.  What a difference an election makes.