Man Without a Mission: Why Does Joe Biden Want to be President?
A very mediocre political career centered for decades on wanting to be president, for the sake of being president.
Joe Biden’s desire to be president has lasted for at least three decades. Obviously, virtually all presidential candidates are ambitious. But we prefer their ambition to come at least partly from something more than the naked desire to be a powerful person. What about Biden’s?
It isn’t a question of political partisanship. For example, Obama wanted to be president from an early age, but I think it’s fairly clear why. He was personally ambitious, to be sure. But he also saw a chance to not just be president but to be the first black president, which did mean something. He also is a leftist and probably has been one for his entire life, as far as I can tell. He wanted to move the country in that direction, and thought he was just the person to do it.
And he was.
Trump is also an ambitious man and always has been. But he had already achieved great fame and fortune when he announced his run in 2015. He said – and I believe him – that he ran because he saw things that needed doing, and he wanted to Make American Great Again.
Please take a look at this NPR article, written around the time of Trump’s inauguration, and offering quotes from about 30 years of Trump’s on-again-off-again presidential ambitions. For the most part there is a remarkable consistency of theme and motivation there. For example, from a 1988 interview with Oprah [emphasis mine]:
Asked if he’d run for president, Trump said:
“I just probably wouldn’t do it, Oprah. I probably wouldn’t, but I do get tired of seeing what’s happening with this country, and if it got so bad, I would never want to rule it out totally, because I really am tired of seeing what’s happening with this country, how we’re really making other people live like kings, and we’re not.”
More about a presidential run and winning. He even uses his signature “believe me:”
“I think I’d win. I tell you what, I wouldn’t go in to lose. I’ve never gone in to lose in my life. And if I did decide to do it, I think I would be inclined — I would say, I would have a hell of a chance of winning, because I think people — I don’t know how your audience feels, but I think people are tired of seeing the United States ripped off. And I can’t promise you everything, but I can tell you one thing, this country would make one hell of a lot of money from those people that for 25 years have taken advantage. It wouldn’t be the way it’s been, believe me.”
Much more at the link. You don’t even have to like Trump or agree with him to see that his basic goals are clear and have barely changed in all these years. It’s not that Trump hasn’t always been personally ambitious, but he also was able to state what he wanted to do for the country and the direction in which he wanted to take it.
But what does Joe Biden want, and why would he think that he’s the man to do it?
Is he running merely to stop Trump? At least partly, I suppose, but that certainly wasn’t true in his previous bids. To bring a divisive America together? But on that score he offers nothing but intermittent and lukewarm lip service rather than soaring rhetoric, energy, or a history of unifying. But he does have a record of strongly desiring to be president, one he’s had since he was a very young man:
When [Biden] first met [future wife] Neilia’s mother, she asked what he wanted to do for a living. Biden informed her he intended to become president of the United States.
Biden had met wife-to-be Neilia when he was 22 years old and married her at 24, so this encounter with his future mother-in-law must have occurred during those years between 22 and 24. That’s how early he had the ambition to be president, and had not only formed the notion but held it firmly enough that he was willing to state it to his future mother-in-law as a solid intention and qualification to marry her daughter.
Now, that’s ambition. But again, to what purpose?
I assume that at any point along the way, Biden could have articulated a convincing reason why he and he alone – of all the mediocre career politicians in the US – should become president. But I don’t think that reason ever would have been convincing. It certainly wasn’t convincing to the American public each previous time he ran:
Until Saturday’s [February 29, 2020] South Carolina primary, Biden had won zero presidential nominating contests across three campaigns and 32 years.
But now he’s the last man standing. At least for the moment.
[NOTE: And remember Ted Kennedy?]
[Neo is a writer with degrees in law and family therapy, who blogs at the new neo.]
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Comments
Because he thinks he can beat Trump.
That’s it.
Then why did he run all those times when Trump wasn’t running?
Practice runs, for when his true time came.
And in his senility, he can’t figure out what’s really going on, that he’s just a piece in the DNC’s shell game against the voters.
Same reason I did — when I was eleven.
I got better.
biden’w mission is to get elected to stop any investigations into the obama administration. Of course joe isn’t competent enough to accomplish that mission, but he will be the figurehead while his democrat cohorts and co-conspirators resume government corruption of epic proportions. The deep state took breathtaking chances with the 2016 election because they thought hillary was inevitable. I suspect even with his current state, in his heart of hearts joe knows he’s a corrupt career criminal politician, and wants the presidency to blunt any more evidence of that coming out.
After watching his noticeable mental decline since last Summer, my take is that she’s as desperate to get into the WH as he; Number One Observatory Circle not good enough for her. She’d get to be First Lady and all that comes with it. She might even take up Jackie’s pill box hats.
If she loved him, she’d take out of this circus which most certainly will get even harder on this enfeebled, selfish, lecherous old man.
Leftists routinely refer to her as Dr. Jill Biden, implying that she’s a medical doctor. But that’s all part of a rather large deception. She’s not a real doctor. Her pretentious claim to that title is based on an EdD (even flimsier than a non-STEM PhD) in “educational leadership” (gag). This is nothing less than a variant of Stolen Valor (ask Don Shipley about that and phony SEALs). Glammed-Up Jill is claiming a status to which she’s not entitled. Real doctors = MDs, dentists, holders of PhDs in the hard sciences. Not real doctors = anyone with an EdD or a PhD in any soft studies programs (especially all those “studies” programs (gag-gag = womyns, black, gay, gender, education)) are exercises in bullshiitte-ology. Word-processing programs have enabled turgid writers to become even more turgid.
A lifetime ago, a friend and I started our PhD dissertations at the same time. He in Psychology, me in Electrical Engineering.
About the time I got my topic approved, he finished. I finished about 18 months later, which was pretty much standard.
Slow Joe Biden is like a dog that chases cars. He’s caught one. What is he going to do with it?
He’ll either put paste all over it or start groping it.
I see it as Dementia Joe wanting to be a Cowboy. Or a Fireman. It’s the title, the exclusive club, same as his corruption being used to make himself wealthy beyond any ability he would have had.
He was a poor student in Law School, and SU Law isn’t exactly a top tier Law School.
It’s not to accomplish anything specific, it’s to crown his non-achievement with the top position title.
I think he really gave up the dream after his VP slot ended, but “Dr. Biden” wants it, and sees it as a means of keeping the corruption Biden was bought by under wraps. He is a true Peter Principle type candidate. He is being given the nomination by default, because the whole clown car of leftists running this time were so terrible that Biden looked like the only realistic choice. He got it because of nostalgia for Obama.
He is getting it because the others were exponentially worse. Think about that, as you see a demented old man whose wife had to cut the latest commercial, with him just staring into the camera, because he has become incoherent.
I sometimes wonder if Obama had the one decent moment of his entire life when he said, “You don’t have to do this, Joe.”
Biden has always been a place-holder candidate, either to be the face of a puppet presidency, or to resign in favor of his vice president, whether it’s Michelle Obama, Hillary Clinton, or (a real clarifying moment) Stacey Abrams.
Maybe Biden is a crook; I suppose that he is. But he’s still a human being, and I feel sorry for him.
Perhaps I am wrong, but I do not feel sorry for unethical people. They freely made decisions that harm other people. They chose paths that end in their own pain.
He is simply being exploited by the unethical people he has chosen to associate with. Think about what kind of woman could be married to this POS. She wants her payday.
Don’t forget gretchen jenner from MI, or amy klown kar from MN.
senility/dementia/addled faculties is most likely the only thing that’s kept him around–and may relegate him to a natural passing–he’s just about proof against arkanicide/obamacide in his current condition–just about
Ask his wife…
Or Pelosi Galore!
Why? Because he thinks it’s His Turn. Have you noticed how both political parties often operate that way?
Republicans didn’t do it the last election.
Not for lack of trying. It was supposed to be Jeb’s turn, remember?
But we cannot say that Republicans have never done it: I’m thinking back over a longer time span.
Old Joe is the Florence Foster Jenkins of politics.
Hell, he is so out of it, he doesn’t remember why he wants to be president. Its his wife and the democrat party that’s pushing him.
Hell, he is so out of it, he doesn’t remember why he wants to be president. Its his wife and the democrat party that’s pushing him.
Why did george h.w bush want to be president?
Bob Dole?
Mittens Romney?
Rat mccain?
I think the most damning thing he has done lately is to stand beside his wife and let her tell us what they will od as the presidential team. He stood there blankly looking into the camera. WTF? He is the candidate, not her! Has the DNC fallen to such a level that they cannot let him stand and read the teleprompter? Or is he capable of reading it?
Has the DNC fallen to that level or are they simply being exposed that they are at that level? It seems that DJT has exposed many frauds in both parties and in the deep state.
Why?
Experiential inertia; it’s what he does. And the more mediocre the individual running, the more (s)he is subject to the laws of such habit. The power of Presence countervails here, and he has little to none, as I see it.
Also, I score him very low on the class-act/respectability scale (Sen John Kennedy, R-LA, and Sen Susan Collins, R-ME, each score very high in my estimation); and, much as I have wished to disregard my instinct but can no longer do so, the same low achievement goes for “Dr” Jill — Joe’s apparently self-serving enabler and promoter. If how she “stands by her man” is her case study of defining educational leadership, well, Joe ain’t ever gonna be led out of his merely shadow-seeing, reality-deprived cave.
And I haven’t even talked about the stench, let alone the likely legal line-crossing coming from, and his integral part in “Hoover’s” (Hunter’s) unearned board-seating, etc, along with his own dutiful adventure in Kyiv at Obama’s behest (and the rest of the free world’s, we’re told) that was nothing if not a vile and corrupt quid-pro-quo. These were both classic Joe et al Biden (family) operations.
So, overall, Joe & Jill make a weak team for my, and I suppose many other Americans’ intents and purposes, anybody maybe with a sense for the forever phony and foul.
In a word, I wish they’d get lost.
He needs to be in public life to keep his records sealed. He also needs to be in public life so his family can graft.
Dang, that’s an extremely well written comment. Hats off, golf clap, kudos, and huzzah!
Pretty much nailed it. Outstanding.
Easy. He wants the power, and he’s deluded enough to think the Dem party will allow him to use it.
Like all leftist Dems, he wants to use the power of the Presidency to force more power into the Dems hands. If Hillary had managed to be President right now, you can bet cold hard cash that she would have an agenda lined up to force the Dems into power for the foreseeable future.
My only wish right now is for Trump to stay in office for another four years and keep on dismantling the Dems power bases, because they want us in chains. Literal if they can, metaphorical if otherwise.
Biden is like a dog chasing a car. He does it because it’s his nature, he has no clue as to any other reason, he has no plans on anything that might come after chasing the car, and should he catch the car, then he will have no clue as to what to do with the car.
“. He was personally ambitious, to be sure. But he also saw a chance to not just be president but to be the first black president….”
The first bi-racial president. He just never acknowledged his white half.
Joe is at the stage that reminds me of Curly “I tried to think but nothing happens.” (It is on Youtube for you younger people)
He heard from Clinton that you can smell a lot of hair in the Oval House.
I think he’s motivated by the free food.
Joey wants the Icey Keems!!!
Watching Biden as VP sniffing and touching young girls just makes my skin crawl. Every time I would see it play out I would yell at the TV hoping the parents would turn around and smack him. Now a days he is just a prop put out there to hold the position open for whoever the Dems pull out of their corrupt hat! Stacy Abrams would make the entire ticket an absolute joke!
GO PRESIDENT TRUMP….WE ARE STILL A GREAT
COUNTRY…& WE WANT YOU TO CONTINUE MAKING US EVEN GREATER!
God Bless America????
Watching Biden as VP sniffing and touching young girls just makes my skin crawl. Every time I would see it play out I would yell at the TV hoping the parents would turn around and smack him. Now a days he is just a prop put out there to hold the position open for whoever the Dems pull out of their corrupt hat! Stacy Abrams would make the entire ticket an absolute joke!
GO PRESIDENT TRUMP….WE ARE STILL A GREAT
COUNTRY…& WE WANT YOU TO CONTINUE MAKING US EVEN GREATER!
God Bless America????
“A very mediocre political career”
If you are being very charitable, yes. That guy has sucked donkey nethers from the moment he lied about a “drunk” driver causing the accident that killed his wife and daughter to the borking to the lying about his – well everything to being chief suckup to earflaps the fey. Just an all around know nothing loudmouth creep, the kind you end up throwing out of your barbecue party.
He doesn’t know why he wants to be President, that and a lot of other things as well. The whole of the Democrat Party has only one goal, to defeat Donald Trump. After that there’s nothing, no plan for what lies ahead, no goals no, aspirations, nothing after that. To put Joe Biden in the White House, you can expect his Presidency to mirror the performance of the House of Representatives for the last two years. Endless governmental waste, time spent on totally wasted endeavors, and when they fail as most of their ideas do, the Democrats will blame it on some outside interference.
Creepy Uncle Joe wants to be President for all the same reasons that career politicians, who’ve never done anything else, want to remain in office – power and enhancement of their personal and familial bank accounts.