More Teasing That Franklin Foer Book About Biden

It looks like I missed the developing buzz over the past couple of weeks about Franklin Foer's new book on Biden, The Last Politician. Foer, it turns out, is a staff writer at The Atlantic and former editor of The New Republic whose views appear to be as predictable as we might assume given that background. According to Axios ,

Frank Foer of The Atlantic worked 2½ years and spoke to nearly 300 people for his forthcoming opus on President Biden's first term, the author tells Axios.

Why it matters: In "The Last Politician," Foer concludes that Biden provides "an instructive example of the tedious nobility of the political vocation. Unheroic but honorably human, he will be remembered as the old hack who could."

Driving the news: The 432-page book, out Tuesday, "dramatizes in forensic detail the first two years of the Biden presidency, concluding with the historic midterm elections," per the publisher.

Foer's work "includes thrilling, blow-by-blow insider reports of the botched withdrawal from Afghanistan and the White House's swift response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine."

It sounds as though it's timed to coincide with the start -- or at least, the putative start -- of Biden's reelection campaign, and the buzz is part of the prearranged buildup. But the book's insider accounts conclude with the 2022 midterms, which lets it simply finesse the whole Hunter story.

It's also worth noting that the market for a 432-page $30 doorstop presidential hagiography is thin. My sketchy understanding of the publishing industry is that library sales, a sure thing, will drive the publisher's profit, although educated ladies of a certain class will buy it at bookstores as well. But the problem is that the project has been in the works, as the Axios puff piece says, for 2½ years, and events have a way of moving faster than that.

Yesterday, Real Clear Politics carried an essay by Charles Lipson, What if Biden Backs Out of the Race?:

President Biden has declared he’s running for a second term, but it’s far from certain he actually will. His infirmity and low poll numbers raise serious doubts. His physical decline shows when he walks or climbs the stairs of Air Force One. His cognitive decline shows when he refuses to hold press conferences or answer even the simplest questions, like how he feels about the devastating fires in Maui.

I checked Charles Lipson on Wikipedia. There's not a whole lot there:

Charles H. Lipson (born February 1, 1948) is an American political scientist who is professor emeritus of political science at the University of Chicago.

. . . Lipson attended Yale as an undergraduate, where he studied Political Science and Economics. He received a Master of Arts degree and a doctoral degree from Harvard University.

While studying at Harvard, Lipson won the Chase Prize for the best essay on a subject relating to the promotion of world peace.

He sometimes makes guest appearances on radio shows and writes op-eds, which is what he's doing here. As far as I can see, his views on any subject are utterly conventional. But they're in sharp contrast to Franklin Foer, who sees Joe as a confident, experienced steady hand. Prof Lipson:

Biden’s dismal poll numbers form a somber backdrop for his reelection campaign. That backdrop is even darker now that his health problems are so visible. . . . The biggest “tell” is that Biden is avoiding the very things active candidates do. He’s not campaigning. He’s not attending a lot of small events with big donors. He’s not running ads. He’s not using the White House’s bully pulpit to address the nation on our challenges and his response to them.

He concludes, as any properly dressed Ivy Leaguer who's won a prize for an essay on world peace should, that we don't know what will happen, and we don't know what effect Joe's withdrawal might have if he does, which he might not. But remember, they paid him to write this, however vapid the read. They paid him because they wanted someone to prepare the Real Clear Politics audience for the possibility.

I will say that the buzz over the Foer book confirms another of my inferences about Biden: he resents his handlers. Per this piece at Read State,

[A]fter a now infamous speech in March where Biden said that Vladimir Putin “cannot remain in power,” his aides had to once again rush out and “clarify” what he “really meant,” which was pretty much the opposite of what he said. Biden reportedly “fumed” about that and complained he was being treated “like a toddler.” (National Review)

But if we give things a little thought, Biden and his handlers appear to be on the same page about the upcoming "campaign", which I think Lipson understands pretty well: the aim will be to keep Joe out of the public eye entirely and instead rely on state and federal indictments and prosecutions to keep the focus on Trump, as well as on efforts to keep him off the ballot in key states. So far, this isn't working; national polls over the past several days show a Trump-Biden matchup well within the margin of error, while each adverse legal development spikes Trump's fundraising and his supporters' enthusiasm.

On the other hand, it appears that the July 26 court hearing, in which the Delaware judge's reluctance to approve Hunter's plea deal resulted in the prosecution withdrawing it and David Weiss's appointment as special prosecutor, closed off another Biden campaign strategy, which was to get Hunter quietly off the stage as a campaign issue. That Abbe Lowell has been uncharacteristically quiet in recent weeks reinforces the surmise that Biden has had to go back to the drawing board to come up with a new Hunter strategy.

Although the House has been out of session and won't return until September 12, Oversight Committee Chairman Comer is telegraphing further investigative discoveries once the House is back in session:

Newsmax anchor Greg Kelly is teasing the release of a damning tape of President Joe Biden.

"Biden has a big mouth and it got him into a lot of trouble, but he hasn't seen the half of it yet," Kelly said on Tuesday's broadcast of Greg Kelly Reports. "There is an audio tape I am told by people in the know—not necessarily in government, not necessarily out of government, I can't say too much—but there is incontrovertible evidence of Joe Biden's corruption that is about to be made public.

"It's not going to happen tomorrow, it's not going to happen before Labor Day, but it will happen sometime between Labor Day and Halloween," the right-wing host said, adding that he also does not know who will be releasing the tape to the public. Kelly claimed that the White House is aware of the tape's circulation.

I have a feeling Joe is doing all he can simply not to think about any such contingencies, hoping his strategy of prosecuting Trump will carry the day if Joe himelf stays quiet. But the House Republicans are mad. My instinct is that Franklin Foer has been overtaken by events even before his book comes out.