No One at the Wheel

The malignant aimlessness of the Biden administration, and what it has meant for the Middle East, comes into full view on the debate stage.

Biden at the CNN presidential debate on June 27.

There really was no way this wasn’t going to be a disaster, one way or another. Donald Trump and Joe Biden, two of the most unpopular major party candidates for president in American history, were also the oldest major candidates for president in American history, gearing up for a rematch on the debate stage in which 4 years had passed and both had become, as time usually concocts, even older than they were before.

Adding to the potential for turmoil was the circumventing of the long-time organizer of presidential debates, the Commission on Presidential Debates, ditching an albeit problematic but normally proportionally neutral stage for the aggressively bombastic one that had been constructed by CNN. In the moderator chairs would be not one, but two journalists beloved by American liberals for their perceived ability to speak truth to power, Jake Tapper and Dana Bash. The two had become more known since October 7th as some of the most visible supporters of Israel’s campaign against Gaza on television, whose level of deference to its narratives arguably crossed into fanaticism.