The Ruth Bader Ginsburg Syndrome
Has anything hurt the Democrats as much as old lions refusing to leave the stage?
The Special Counsel’s report into misplaced classified documents is, on the surface, good news for President Biden. He won’t be indicted, even though it’s clear he “willfully” retained classified documents and shared some of them with a ghostwriter. We will thereby be spared the indignity of choosing between two indicted presidents this November. The reason for dropping the case is that it likely could not be proven beyond a reasonable doubt that Biden did this deliberately, and he cooperated fully with the inquiry, and returned the materials promptly.
The report is persuasive and thorough, it seems to me. But in some ways it would have been better for the president if he had been indicted. Because among the reasons he wasn’t is that he’s “a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.” Money quote:
Mr. Biden’s [2017] recorded conversations with Zwonitzer from 2017 are often painfully slow, with Mr. Biden struggling to remember events and straining at times to read and relay his own notebook entries.
In his interview with our office, Mr. Biden’s memory was worse. He did not remember when he was vice president, forgetting on the first day of the interview when his term ended (“if it was 2013 — when did I stop being Vice President?”), and forgetting on the second day of the interview when his term began (“in 2009, am I still Vice President?”). He did not remember, even within several years, when his son Beau died. And his memory appeared hazy when describing the Afghanistan debate that was once so important to him. Among other things, he mistakenly said he “had a real difference” of opinion with General Karl Eikenberry, when, in fact, Eikenberry was an ally whom Mr. Biden cited approvingly in his Thanksgiving memo to President Obama.
The last two things are worrying. The death of his son Beau was a searing event — and Biden couldn’t recall when it happened “even within several years.” Publicly, he even keeps saying Beau died in Iraq! And recalling a key ally in your fight over Afghanistan as a key opponent is a mark of real senescence. This past week alone, Biden talked of a recent G-7 meeting when he was chatting with President Mitterrand of France, a man who died in 1996; three days later, he had another memory of that same summit, recounting what Helmut Kohl had said, when it was obviously Angela Merkel. Mitterand, Macron — maybe an alliterative mistake. But confusing Kohl, who died in 2017, with Merkel? That’s a little harder to dismiss.
Even in his presser yesterday, he said he was talking to the president of Mexico, rather than Egypt, about Gaza. Or watch his recent attempt to explain where Israel-Hamas negotiations are at. Yes, he’s trying not to gaffe there, which is a good thing. But he seems close to catatonic. He has a habit of wandering off stage. And remember “Where’s Jackie?” Ahead of Sunday, Biden has — for the second year in a row — turned down an offer for a pre-Super Bowl interview. It’s a pattern. Biden has held the fewest press conferences since Reagan, and jokes about it: “In a lot of ways, this dinner sums up my first two years in office. I’ll talk for 10 minutes, take zero questions and cheerfully walk away.”
Am I being too harsh? The NYT did their trademarked headline: “Republicans pounce on report that puts spotlight on Biden’s memory lapses.” (They later stealth-edited that away). Matt Yglesias was pissed: “[Robert Hur’s] investigation does not reveal a crime. So instead of saying ‘all good!’ he goes off and does partisan political hits?” But Hur did establish a crime — the classified docs were badly mishandled; and part of his explanation for a decision not to indict was that Biden’s general dotard affect would make it impossible to get a conviction. A true partisan might have indicted nonetheless, if only to give Trump cover. Hur didn’t.
And look: neither you nor I know how much dementia is affecting an 81 year old. There are times when Biden seems remarkably lucid for a man his age. My best guess is that it’s patchy: he has good days and bad days. But this much we do know: even if we judge him able to do the job now, what about in three or four years’ time? That’s what we are being asked to judge. Many of us have parents who were fine in their eighties … until suddenly they weren’t — and in the case of my mother, the decline was swift. That’s why in a poll last year, “fully 77 percent said Biden is too old to be effective for four more years,” and 69 percent of Democrats feel this way. Who wouldn’t?
When you add to this his refusal to replace Kamala Harris on the ticket to reassure us that someone faintly capable of doing the job could take over if and when he crashes, and you have a classic Ruth Bader Ginsburg problem. RBG’s belief in her own superpowers, and her familiar human resistance to giving up power, led to the end of Roe — a body-blow to her longstanding jurisprudence. She destroyed much of what she had achieved by her refusal to leave the stage in a timely manner.
You can say the same for Hillary Clinton. She had her chance to win the presidency in 2008, failed, and should have been content to serve in Obama’s cabinet and retire from the stage. But hell no, she wouldn’t go — ensuring that Donald Trump became president. Joe Biden seems prepared to follow in her footsteps, risking a second Trump term, rather than concede that after decades in public service, two terms as veep and one term as POTUS, it might be time to make way for someone else. Can someone not take him aside and beg him to do the right thing?
New On The Dishcast: Isikoff & Klaidman
Michael Isikoff is the chief investigative correspondent for Yahoo News, where he is also editor-at-large for reporting and investigations. Daniel Klaidman is the editor-in-chief for Yahoo News. The veteran reporters have new a book called Find Me the Votes: A Hard-Charging Georgia Prosecutor, a Rogue President, and the Plot to Steal an American Election. We had a lively chat!
Listen to the episode here. There you can find two clips of our convo — on the violent threats spurred by Trump’s conspirators, and the hero of the Georgia case. That link also takes you to a ton of commentary on last week’s pod with Justin Brierley on finding faith in modern times. I might have underestimated your interest in all the God stuff. We also hear from readers on the “LBGTQ” craze, including a dad seeking advice about his gay son.
The Immigration Compromise
It seemed to me a bit of a watershed last week when a reporter for the New York Times wrote the following:
In December alone, more than 300,000 people crossed the southern border, a record number. It is not just because they believe they will be able to make it across the 2,000 mile southern frontier. They are also certain that once they make it to the United States they will be able to stay. Forever.
This was undoubtedly news to readers of the NYT, who have long been reassured that there is no border or immigration crisis, except in the minds of white supremacists. The Dish has been making the point that we have effectively had open borders for years now — only to be told that only a bigot could say such a thing. Now President Biden and the Democrats agree — primarily, it seems, because they want to send money to Ukraine and Israel, and are beginning to shit their pants over the election.
So that’s a plus! And the new border bill actually does impose some order on the influx. It doesn’t stop it, mind you. As David Frum puts it exquisitely: the Democrats compromised because they “want an end to the mood of crisis at the border.” They want to “change the mood,” but not the mass migration. Even as the foreign-born population reaches levels never seen before in this country, even as several million undocumented immigrants — I’ve seen estimates of between 3 and 8 million — have already entered the US in the last three years at Biden’s direction, and even as the backlog in asylum cases is years long, nothing too drastic is proposed going forward.
Yes, the bill does some important things that Democrats have long opposed. It would make it a harder to claim asylum; it would invest in judges, border agents, lawyers, detention centers, asylum officials and even a measly amount for the wall. It would speed deportation by having asylum requests processed by non-judges. And it would give the president powers to “shut down” the border if more than 5,000 people are caught outside ports of entry in a single day — averaged over a week. But even in a shutdown, USCIS would still be able to admit 1,400 migrants a day at ports of entry, along with unlimited numbers of unaccompanied minors (mostly between 15 and 17) if they are not from Mexico itself. This is one hell of a loophole. In 2021, the most recent year tabulated, minors amounted to 47 percent of border apprehensions, about half of them unaccompanied, and only a small fraction were from Mexico.
I have two criteria for judging if this country is serious about illegal immigration. Have they provided enough detention centers/beds to detain everyone until they are allowed into the country? And have they passed a mandatory federal E-Verify to ensure that those who do sneak in can’t get a job? Neither is in the bill. Family units get released after just 20 days in detention. And there is a provision for just 50,000 beds. If the pace is a little under 5,000 a day, as envisaged in the bill, that’s ten days’ worth. Not serious.
But better than what we currently have? Yessir. If I were a Senator, I’d have voted for the bill — as a downpayment on a more potent package down the line. Right now, we have the nightmare scenario in which likely migrants get the message that it’s still a free-for-all, but probably for not that much longer. So we’ve incentivized a whole new wave this year — and added incentives for minors to come en masse.
I favor much more stringent border control not just because of the massive immigration backlog we have from recent years; but because the world has changed. The 21st Century will not be like the 20th. Migration patterns from south to north are gaining in size and intensity. The more who get in, the more will come. When the proportion of the foreign-born in the US last reached the levels of today, immigration was all but shut down for three decades, ushering in a golden era for both native-born and naturalized workers, and a more cohesive sense of nationhood, as legal immigrants were given time to integrate and adapt.
Something like that is needed now. Much more spending on detention facilities; beefed-up deportation procedures; massive investment in immigration infrastructure; a far higher bar for asylum; and a lowering of legal immigration rates for the sake of national cohesion and integration. This bill is a start. But no more than that. The Dems are beginning to acknowledge reality. Eventually, they will do something that rises to the occasion. Or a Trump administration will.
Money Quotes For The Week
“It would be a striking paradox if the President, who alone is vested with the constitutional duty to ‘take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed,’ were the sole officer capable of defying those laws with impunity,” - DC Court of Appeals.
“A Houthi-run court in Yemen just sentenced 13 people to death on homosexuality charges. As a gay Yemeni, this hits close to home. It could have been me on those deathbeds. Where are all the ‘human rights activists’ who have been cheering for the Houthis?” - Luai Ahmed.
“Nobody is scandalized if I give a blessing to a businessman who may be exploiting people, and that is a very serious sin. Whereas they are scandalized if I give it to a homosexual. ... This is hypocrisy!” - Pope Francis.
“I’m not going to say what’s right or wrong, or which way to think. The whole point is to learn how to think, not what to think,” - Warren Smith, talking to a student about JK Rowling. The whole exchange is a must-watch:
“Guess it’s not surprising, but didn’t realize how much of a partisan gap there was in perceptions of whether the US is a great country. There didn’t used to be much of one. And [Dem] numbers didn’t recover at all after Biden replaced Trump in office,” - Nate Silver pointing to Pew numbers.
“we should put phrenology Twitter in a gulag. not even joking. no role for these people in society, we should just get rid of them and apologize later,” - Will Stancil.
“Goddamnit, don’t dishonor my amazing achievement by chocking it up to [racial] favoritism. I resent it; I don’t like it; I don’t need it; I don’t want it. That’s not a political position. I’m defending my own dignity here. So you gonna call me a sellout because I’m defending my dignity? Fuck you!” - Glenn Loury on affirmative action.
“Interesting! Grindr, a dating app for gay men, says people can filter their searches for trans/NB people because ‘it’s critical for this community to be able to find each other,’ but it no longer allows non-trans males to do the same thing,” - Ben Appel. Grindr is increasingly an app where homophobic straight men try and hook up with trans women, and where gay men are hit on by people with vaginas. It’s a straight/queer/trans app with scarcely veiled contempt for gay male spaces.
Yglesias Award Nominee
“You’re getting migrants beating up policemen in the streets of New York. You’re seeing an influx of migrants all over the country that frankly have people outraged. … We’re looking every day at the invasion of migrants, and they’re playing a time game of politics on this?” - Al Sharpton on MSNBC.
ICYMI
I spoke with the great and powerful Freddie Sayers about what I got wrong about Trump in the run-up to his presidency, and the nature of his threat today:
Dissent Of The Week
From a reader with a trans son:
Don’t you think, Andrew, that the artsy, “effeminate,” theatre-loving gays of the past maybe didn’t like bears like you crowding into their bars and clubs and summer playgrounds? Maybe we need two words to describe what kind of gay a person is.
You seem really personally threatened by kids who identify as trans and fearful the “gay community” (whatever that means) will shrink due to maybe-gay-kids-being-pressured-into-sex-change-surgeries because they now think they are trans, not gay. Do you not think parents, doctors, and the kids themselves don’t consider that possibility VERY carefully?
LGBTQI+ means anyone who does not fit the cis, heteronormative experience. No one thinks they are all identical. But they do have some similar experiences. When specific identities are called for, then people can focus on just Ls or Gs (oh, but wait — bears or queens?) or Bs or Ts, etc. Try to calm down a bit on this.
On the first point: no. All the differences between various types of gays were overwhelmed by our common same-sex attraction. And many of those theater twinks were quite into bears, and vice-versa. What the new movement insists on is destroying that same-sex identity, by including biological women in it. That is a direct assault by transqueer activists on gay male culture, just as it has long been an even more profound assault on lesbian culture. It’s homophobic.
On the second point: no. I’m not “personally threatened” by anyone. I’m fine — lucky enough to have grown up without transqueers trying to turn me into a girl. I’m worried about gay kids today being put through this process. If I thought that decisions to irreversibly mutilate and transform a child’s body were rare and a result of extremely careful consideration, I’d be much less worried. But the current movement actually wants to ban any long or thoughtful process of examination of a child with gender dysphoria — for ideological reasons. They want to fast-track all of it — using lies about suicide and emotional blackmail. Another transqueer activist attack on gay people. And many actual trans people are not down with that.
On the third point: no. Heteronormativity, as lefties use it, generally means a desire to love and commit to another person in a stable relationship, up to marriage, sometimes with kids. I’d say that a huge majority of gays and lesbians are therefore heteronormative, which means to say human just as straight people are human. So your formula really does exclude most gays and lesbians. That’s why I don’t use it. It does not apply to me. And in my experience, the LGBTQIA+ community — to which I am supposed to pledge allegiance — doesn’t even really exist outside of activist fantasies and queer theory dreams.
We have “some similar experiences”? Name one. I have zero in common with someone with acute gender dysphoria, who can only live life sanely by waging a hormonal war on their own endocrine system, creating open wounds in their body that are constantly in need of dilation and antibiotics, or adding fake penises from flesh taken from their arms. I have no problem with people who do or need this as adults. I defend their right to do so all the time. I think it’s a tough path and I favor supporting it in every possible way, including respect, kindness and equal civil rights.
But I have nothing, absolutely nothing, in common with it. I’ve never been misgendered; I love my biological sex; I don’t buy the premises of postmodern queer theory; I’m against child circumcision, let alone neutering and castration. Yes, I could share some life experiences with a trans person, but no different than my shared life experiences with a straight person. I don’t see why I should be dragooned into a direct attachment to either group. Why would you want me to?
A pedant corrects me:
A very small point, but technically LGBTQIA+ is not an acronym, but rather an initialism. An acronym, like NASA, is a series of letters pronounced as a word. An initialism, like the FBI, is a series of letters pronounced as the individual letters. No one says N-A-S-A; they say NASA. And no one says “Fib-eye”; they say F-B-I. For your amusement!
You’re right! As always, keep the dissents coming: dish@andrewsullivan.com.
Mental Health Break
The Grammy duet with Chapman and Combs isn’t available on YouTube, but this mashup is nearly as moving. For me, this is America at its best and most beautiful:
In The ‘Stacks
Joe Klein on the immunity ruling: “it may be the moment when the Trump fever broke.” Jay Kuo details the court’s reasoning.
A global trade war is looming. Trump’s tariffs would tax every American, warns Yglesias.
The Dems have a huge war chest, but do political ads matter much anymore?
“To Putin’s Surprise, an Opponent is Rising,” observes Cathy Young.
A gay British MP is defenestrated by death threats from Islamists. “Queers” are silent.
Rachel Kleinfeld is worried that “the ideological gap between men and women is growing.” Eirik Garnås argues that today’s feminism “hurts both men and women.”
Condoms are now covered by the ACA. Autumn Mackenzie is raising awareness about the Pill’s downsides.
Deepfake porn is swiftly becoming a problem.
Ed West calls King Charles “our most religious monarch since the Stuarts.”
Animal rights shouldn’t be a culture-war issue, especially with lab meat.
Jesse Singal ably tackles “Woke Kindergarten.”
Erik Hoel on a recent revelation: “Neptune, it turns out, isn’t actually blue.”
Check out New Jerusalem, a new ‘stack by Spencer and Andrew Klavan. Reality Check is a new one about misinformation from Steve Brill and Gordon Crovitz.
The View From Your Window Contest
Where do you think? Email your entry to contest@andrewsullivan.com. Please put the location — city and/or state first, then country — in the subject line. Bonus points for fun facts and stories. Proximity counts. The deadline for entries is Wednesday night at midnight (PST). The winner gets the choice of a View From Your Window book or two annual Dish subscriptions.
See you next Friday.