SAUNDERS: Is Joe Biden really such a good guy?

WASHINGTON — Ever since Thursday’s debate, it has been clear to the American public that a mentally compromised President Joe Biden has put his own ego ahead of the country — a charge the left has hurled at Donald Trump from his first day in office.

Now the big-media mantra is that it is such a shame that Biden isn’t up to the job because, while he shouldn’t be in the Oval Office, he really is such an incredibly good guy. A New York Times headline for a Thomas Friedman column captured big media’s lamentations: “Joe Biden is a Good Man and a Good President. He Must Bow Out of the Race.”

I don’t think Biden is as good as he likes to portray himself. I don’t think he’s a good president. So I’m only buying the last part of that statement.

To start, Biden has stayed in office past his due date, with little regard for what’s best for the country or the American people. Our national security rivals see how weak our president is, which makes the world a more dangerous place. Not good.

Biden likes to say that he devoted his life to public service, but he wasn’t putting the public first.

What’s more, Biden’s inner circle was limited to people who played along with the charade — yes people who wouldn’t challenge him. (Hmmmm. When did we hear that before about a U.S. president?) Not good for a president.

Biden has failed to live up to his promise to voters who were led to believe that if elected, the former vice president would govern as a steady hand and a moderate.

In office, Biden has governed further to the left of the man who picked him to be his running mate. Barack Obama didn’t open the border. Biden did. Until it hurt him politically. Not good.

In 1991 when then-President George H. W. Bush nominated Clarence Thomas to the U.S. Supreme Court, Biden was chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Biden had no problem raking Thomas over the coals for the essentially uncorroborated charge that Thomas had sexually harassed attorney Anita Hill when she was a subordinate in the Department of Education and EEOC. Biden was one of 48 senators to vote against the justice’s confirmation.

Yet Biden had no problem palling around with the late Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., who was notorious for, as the late Michael Kelly wrote in GQ, “his obsessive public womanizing and his frequent boorishness,” not to mention manhandling waitresses.

Later according to Politico, Biden offered that the Thomas hearings brought up the issue of “sexual harassment,” an issue “no one wanted to touch.” Like he was so good. When he wasn’t.

In 2012, then Vice President Biden warned a racially mixed audience that, if elected, GOP nominee Mitt Romney would “put y’all back in chains.” A cheap shot against a good man.

I don’t like to kick a man when he is down. But really, that never stopped Joe Biden.

Contact Review-Journal Washington columnist Debra J. Saunders at dsaunders@reviewjournal.com. Follow @debrajsaunders on X.