Mae West Can’t Help Us Now

“Between two evils, I always pick the one I never tried before.”
Mae West

We learned on Thursday that President Joe Biden will not face criminal charges for taking classified information about national security matters with him when he left the vice presidency in 2017. Special U.S. prosecutor Robert K. Hur said he would not be bringing charges.

This whole business with how high-ranking elected officials handle classified documents puzzles me. And apparently neither this nor the allegedly much more egregious violations by former President Trump are isolated cases. President Reagan in particular has been cited as someone who carted off eight years of stuff after leaving office. What is it with these people? They have boatloads of staff people who know (or should know) what the law requires. Is this just carelessness, misunderstanding, or is it pure hubris?

Hur made several differentiations between the Biden case and the Trump case. In general Biden was a cooperative violator and Trump was the opposite, probably even obstructing justice. I don’t want to get into that at this point, there will be plenty of others to scrutinize this question when Trump’s case finally reaches the courts. My concern is much more immediate.

I believe, and I think many Americans believe, that the choice we may well have to make in November is very disheartening. Among our three hundred and forty million Americans, are these two the best we can come up with?!?!? Do I have to choose between a man who flaunted every presidential norm in his first term, is charged in over ninety civil and criminal cases and routinely shakes down his apparently blinded supporters to pay his legal bills (among many other things) AND a man who is seen by many, by virtue of his age, to be a risk to our country if elected again?

The bottom line of Hur’s report is that Biden won’t be prosecuted. I have read the executive summary of the report and skimmed the balance of the other three-hundred-fifty-some pages. This is virtually the ONLY positive thing that a Biden supporter can take from it. Consider the following assertions:

• President Biden really did willfully retain and disclose classified materials after his vice presidency when he was a private citizen. Yes, he is not going to be charged, and others including Trump have done much worse, BUT HE STILL DID IT.
• Hur said that Biden cooperated and would likely be difficult to convict. “Mr. Biden would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview of him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.” Geez, just what we want for the person holding the most powerful position in the world, a well-meaning, doddering old man.
• Later in the report Hur said that Biden “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?’).”
• Hur goes on to allege that “He did not remember, even within several years, when his son Beau died [May 2015]. And his memory appeared hazy when describing the Afghanistan debate that was once so important to him.” Can this really be true? It’s hard to say, but given some of his recent public appearances one could doubt.

President Biden is livid about these assertions and denies them vigorously. I certainly would do the same if I were in his position. Both parties routinely accuse the others while in power of weaponizing the Justice Department. Yes, Hur was a Trump appointee at one time, but he was assigned this task by Attorney General Merrick Garland. It is hard for the little people like me to really know, but based on the fact that both parties have from time to time complained about Garland, he might be the closest thing to a straight shooter that we have there.

But I am going to ski right by all of that. I am a fiscal conservative, although some would call me a radical because I still can’t understand why we couldn’t and shouldn’t have a balanced budget. There are a lot of positions on which I don’t agree with Joe Biden, but I like him. Heck, I even voted for him. And I hope that I am not being unfair. But regardless of the veracity of these reports, the Democrats have got to act now to find another candidate. The American voters DESERVE better alternatives than these two flawed men. We can’t even follow Mae West’s guidance. Both of these guys have been tried before. As a discouraged conservative I have no hope whatsoever that the Republican party can free itself from Trump’s iron grip to do anything but to endorse him. But by heavens, whoever constitutes the power brokers in the Democratic party have got to spring to action. Someone MUST convince President Biden that it is in the best interest of the nation to identify a more acceptable Democratic candidate to stand for election. I believe that there are MANY who, if they get going right now, can defeat our philandering, crooked, himself-aged, criminal former president. I just fear that Joseph R. Biden may not be one of them.