So, Who's In Charge At The White House?

I'm back to my theories on what's actually going on in President Brandon's brain. As I've been saying for some time, I don't think it's senility or dementia; his thinking strikes me as purpose-driven, however obscure that purpose may be. Among the recent headlines saying he's surpassed modern records for presidential vacation days, I see most recently that the Brandons are returning to the beach this weekend:

For the second time this month, President Joe Biden and First Lady Dr. Jill Biden will be spending the weekend at their North Shores beach home. The couple was in town the first weekend of June to celebrate Jill’s birthday, which was June 3, and this weekend is Father’s Day.

According to the White House’s Daily Guidance and Press Schedule issued June 16, the presidential couple are leaving Washington, D.C., at 11 a.m., Friday, June 17, and are expected to arrive in the Rehoboth area by 11:55 a.m. The guidance doesn’t say when the Bidens will be leaving the area; it just says they’ll be in town through the weekend. However, the Federal Aviation Administration has issued a restricted flight-area notice that lasts until 7:15 p.m., Monday, June 20.

I submit that if the president's thought processes are organized and purpose-oriented, then here we see a good part of his purpose, which we might characterize as "avoiding work". Haven't we all known people like that? Think about Wally in the Dilbert comic, then relate him to the real-world equivalents in our own careers. Don't we see those people in Joe? Let's see how this breaks out in the policy sphere. Take a recent report from Politico:

For more than a year, Democratic lawmakers and like-minded advocates have pleaded with Joe Biden to create a “gun czar” to address the epidemic of violence.

Each time, the president’s team pushed back with force, contending it has the perfect person already in place, someone with command over the issue and extraordinary access to the president himself.

That person is Susan Rice.

. . . Her ascendence to the role of point person on guns marks the latest chunk of policy turf over which she has claimed jurisdiction, joining a sprawling portfolio that stretches from policing and racial justice to student loan debt, immigration and health care policy, including a prime piece of protecting abortion rights.

The scope of her fiefdom is as remarkable as how she managed to secure it. Having eschewed a public-facing role, Rice has relied on a combination of internal maneuvering and bureaucratic know-how to place herself at the nerve center of some of the fiercest debates roiling Washington. And she’s further cemented her status with the president in the process.

Wait a moment. Isn't Ron Klain still chief of staff? But the story doesn't mention him until farther down:

Rice’s elevated stature in the West Wing has come with fierce loyalty from colleagues and praise so superlative-laden that it borders on deification. More recently, it has led to speculation inside the White House that she will succeed Ron Klain should he leave the chief of staff post.

I think there's a subtext here. Ron Klain was supposed to be in charge -- look at this puff piece from February 2021 in CNN:

Unusually visible, involved in practically everything, and free in sharing his opinions on what has become the new administration's must-follow Twitter feed, White House chief of staff Ron Klain has emerged as the building's most central figure aside from the President himself.

His combination of deep Washington experience and long professional ties to President Joe Biden have rendered Klain one of the most powerful chiefs of staff in history, officials and those close to the White House said, one uniquely positioned to confront the parallel crises facing the nation while also channeling a President he understands implicitly.

Except now Klain is on his way out, and Politico is trying to figure out who really runs the show. The odd thing is that both the CNN and Politico stories pump first Klain and now Rice, but a couple paragraphs farther down, they discount the influence of both. For instance, in Politico:

To some former colleagues and outside advocates, Rice has come to personify a kind of risk-averse, incremental approach to policy-making that they fear falls far short of addressing the country’s needs — and will ill-serve Democrats in the midterms and elections beyond.

“Rice is seen as a domestic policy lightweight and a block to any good things that happen to cross her desk,” said the leader of one progressive organization, who asked to withhold their name out of fear of angering Rice and the White House. “So everybody who wants to do big things has a vested interest in her desk being as empty as possible.”

If that's the case, then why is Biden so closely identified with two highly controversial policies, first, the abolition of fossil fuels, and second, pansexualism, including bringing transsexuals into the mainstream, having men compete in women's sports, and radical abortionism? He's been very clear for months now that rising fuel prices aren't his fault, but they're fine anyhow, because they'll make everyone buy electric cars? Or the latest leak that if the Supreme Court overturns Roe, he'll declare a national health emergency?

I think the reality here is that he isn't listening to anybody, at least nobody in a conventional political job, although the agenda he most frequently expresses is much closer to Klain than Rice. But if Klain is out and Rice is in, why isn't he backing away from killing fossil fuels or supporting transgenders on the Day of Visibility? But these positions are nevertheless neither delusional nor hallucinatory. They're this-wordly and oddly consistent with some arcane purpose, whatever that may be.

His son Hunter, of course, claims Dad listens to him. That may be more credible than theories about either Ron Klain or Susan Rice. I'm inclined to see both Hunter's advice and an overriding desire to avoid any kind of real work as better explanations for the big guy's approach to the office.