In 1980, the Boston Globe put a place-holding headline on an editorial about a speech by President Jimmy Carter.
“Mush from the wimp,” the headline read — and it appeared in more than 150,000 copies of the paper before editors caught their error and removed it.
I thought about that headline as I watched Joe Biden’s UN speech Tuesday.
The similarities go far beyond another mushy speech from another wimpy president.
Biden now rivals Carter as the worst American president of the modern era — and maybe of all time.
Both men were one-term Democrats felled by inflation and disorder at home.
On the global stage, they pursued policies that too often treated American power as a problem rather than a solution, and were rewarded with mayhem and murderous aggression.
There are differences, too, with Carter constrained by his faith-based moral imperatives, while Biden’s family got rich by selling his name to foreigners, some of them adversaries.
But the bottom line is that both were shown the door because most Americans had lost confidence in their ability to lead the nation safely forward.
Only the details differ.
Still deep in denial
To judge by his UN speech, Biden has not yet come to grips with reality.
He dishonestly suggests he voluntarily passed the party’s torch to his vice president, declaring that “Some things are more important than staying in power.”
That was one of several passages designed to weave a positive legacy out of thin air and rampant failure.
No sale.
The nation and the world are in far worse shape now than when Biden took office, and had he stayed in the race, he would have lost to Donald Trump in a landslide.
Americans are generous and patient, but not stupid.
Indeed, the widespread belief that we are now closer than ever to World War III captures the truth of Biden’s disastrous term.
Rarely if ever have things gotten so bad so fast.
As part of his sleight of hand, he used his UN speech to paint himself as an optimist, and cited the end of our wars in Vietnam and Iraq as proof that “things can get better.”
Of course they can — with the right leadership, which in this case means someone else.
He tried to sneak Afghanistan into the memory lane mix, saying, “I was determined to end it, and I did,” before saying he thinks “every day” of the 13 service members who died in his chaotic withdrawal.
As always, he ignores the inconvenient fact that every military leader warned him that the complete and sudden abandonment would be a disaster — and it was.
So what does he think about when he thinks about those Americans who died because of his arrogant mistake?
Does he acknowledge even to himself that he is responsible for their deaths?
And what about Taliban rule — does he ever think of the brutality toward dissenters that filled the vacuum he created?
How does he reconcile his actions with the Taliban’s latest barbaric restrictions on women, which require total body and face covering and public silence?
Then there’s the message the Afghanistan bugout sent to the world.
Vladimir Putin saw the sudden withdrawal as proof that America was in retreat and decided the time was ripe for an invasion of Ukraine.
A “minor incursion” would be OK, Biden stupidly said.
Iran smelled the weakness and unleashed the hell of Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis on Israel.
Yet, repeating the mistakes of Barack Obama, Biden continues to reward Iran with sanctions relief and punishes Israel by withholding arms and isolating it on the world stage.
He, along with many Dems, insists that “Israel has a right to defend itself” and then quickly adds a “but” that effectively limits the Jewish state’s defense to its own borders.
Had Israel agreed to his terms for a cease-fire in Gaza, it would soon be facing another armed Hamas and Iran would be preparing the next round of assaults.
Although the Israelis rightly rejected the suicide pact Biden offered, it was another example of American prestige being squandered on bad decisions.
Then there’s China, which had to be giddy when Biden made excuses after one of its spy balloons flew openly across America’s heartland.
No doubt Xi Jinping was delighted to hear that Biden downplayed the incident and even expressed doubt that Xi himself knew about the brazen gambit.
It’s more than a point of curiosity to wonder how Biden thinks about all these and other terrible things that happened on his watch.
The world is on fire and despots are on the march, yet he paints himself as a man of peace, as if all these events are just coincidence or bad luck.
See no evil
He doesn’t see, or admit, that his obsession with peace isn’t noble when it appeases evil.
Peace through strength is not in his playbook and it is nonsense to boast about American might while you shrink our military and force our brave warriors to focus on pronouns.
If you’re a foreign power eager to seize territory and momentum, you couldn’t ask for a softer touch than Come-And-Get-It Biden.
That’s what the millions upon millions of illegal migrants have realized as they cross our borders.
Most stop to fill out paperwork with Border Patrol agents who have been reduced to clerks, but millions of others — “gotaways,” in officialspeak — have entered the US without even that formality.
This is a problem unlike any America has ever seen, and Trump is not wrong to call it an invasion.
Biden has never admitted the scope of the problem, nor explained why he threw open the doors to let it happen.
Vice President Kamala Harris, the erstwhile “border czar,” has adopted Biden’s dishonest defense that Trump urged Republicans to kill a bipartisan Senate bill that would have shrunk the numbers.
It’s dishonest because the bill came in the fourth year of their tenure and would have reduced the number of illegal crossers by about half, when a simple reversal of the executive orders Biden used to open it would have been faster and more effective.
Besides, the bill didn’t pass either chamber of Congress, so claiming it was a cure isn’t even an honest talking point.
Democratic crime wave
Meanwhile, the invasion has led to a crime wave all its own in many locations far from the border, New York included.
And it has been a budget buster, with tens of billions of dollars being spent on a massive new problem created at the stroke of Biden’s pen.
If that weren’t legacy stains enough, here’s a prediction: History will record Biden’s tenure as the moment when the Department of Justice violated its honor and traditions by jumping headlong into partisan politics.
The prosecution of Trump, both as a former president and as Biden’s opponent, marks a new low in our nation’s history.
Never before has a former president been charged with a federal crime, and I don’t believe it’s simply a matter that all others were angels after leaving office.
Rather, it’s that previous generations understood something profound about the fabric of our nation, and what held it together.
They put country ahead of party.
The irony is that Biden took office promising to unite America, saying in his inaugural address he would work equally hard for his opponents and his supporters.
It was a promise that evaporated the moment he made it.