Very serious blue-checked journo can't believe people are so focused on Joe Biden's presidential fitness 'after living through four years of Trump'

Like so many of us, Commentary’s Noah Rothman is deeply disturbed and appalled by Joe Biden’s pathetic excuse for leadership:

This is the worst display of presidential maladministration in my lifetime.

— Noah Rothman (@NoahCRothman) August 18, 2021

Apparently Rothman’s observation really rubbed ArcDigital editor-in-chief Berny Belvedere the wrong way, because he got pretty upset about people calling out Joe Biden when there’s Donald Trump to think about.

Some on the right are really calling for Biden to resign as if we didn’t just live through a presidency that featured two impeachments and something like three trillion resign-worthy moments.

— Berny Belvedere (@bernybelvedere) August 19, 2021

Your solemn and dispassionate pleas about the importance of presidential fitness are absolutely going to be taken seriously.

— Berny Belvedere (@bernybelvedere) August 19, 2021

The last guy served as the insurrectionary muse for an assault on our own government. He incited a violent takeover of our electoral processes. But, yes, your advice that the current guy should go will absolutely be taken seriously.

— Berny Belvedere (@bernybelvedere) August 19, 2021

Are all of Joe Biden’s critics calling for impeachment or the 25th Amendment? If so, we must’ve missed it.

I want you to imagine what it must be to actually think this after living through four years of Donald Trump. To be so free from the inconvenient constraints of recent history—it must be bliss. https://t.co/kjs3cnDlD1

— Berny Belvedere (@bernybelvedere) August 19, 2021

Now imagine what it must be like to actually think that whataboutism is a good retort to Joe Biden’s critics, particularly critics like Noah Rothman who, in their intellectual consistency, were also critical of Donald Trump when criticism was warranted.

Hypocrisy is the easiest criticism in the world to make, since no one is completely consistent with their values, esp. in politics. Any character- or competence-based criticism of Biden from those quarters would be hypocritical. But so what? What about the criticisms themselves?

— Spencer Case (@SpencerJayCase) August 19, 2021

I want to address this because Spencer is sharp and this is a good point. Most of the time, rhetorical techniques like ad hominems and whataboutism are just cynical strategies to deflect criticism. My point here was slightly different.https://t.co/TJ1UTTDt6W

— Berny Belvedere (@bernybelvedere) August 19, 2021

Berny’s point here was that Joe Biden doesn’t merit criticism of his presidential fitness — or lack thereof — because Orange Man Was Bad.

I think it's a bit like we're all in this huge neighborhood and a guy with a lawn on fire and a house in complete disrepair is pointing at the guy's house on my cul-de-sac who has a mold problem in one room and saying, "Your friend needs to move out."

— Berny Belvedere (@bernybelvedere) August 19, 2021

The White House has more than “a mold problem” right now.

I'm not suggesting the question of Biden's fitness shouldn't be considered. It should. If I conclude he's unfit for office, I'll say so, even if I think his opponents wouldn't do the same if the situation were reversed.

— Berny Belvedere (@bernybelvedere) August 19, 2021

Berny really needs to stop assuming that just because intellectual honesty and consistency are difficult for him doesn’t mean they’re difficult for everyone else.

But this, ultimately, isn't a thread about Biden's fitness; it's a thread about the unfitness of Biden's critics. This isn't a philosophy club; the context here is political action. They lack the moral standing to issue calls for Biden's resignation without derision and ridicule.

— Berny Belvedere (@bernybelvedere) August 19, 2021

Someone certainly has a high opinion of himself despite lacking the moral standing to do so.

I cannot recall an instance during the Trump administration when the executive departments were so rudderless and unprepared for a foreseeable contingency – indeed an outcome in no small part of their own creation. https://t.co/Tgwd1Ig7Dv

— Luke Thompson (@ltthompso) August 19, 2021

I can't see what you're referring to, but maladministration is not the basis for impeachment. It's the basis for other remedies, but not impeachment.

— Noah Rothman (@NoahCRothman) August 19, 2021

Can Rothman not see it because Belvedere blocked him?

It’s extremely dumb, but typical of the broader issue stuck in my craw. pic.twitter.com/KBBJtvTK8R

— Luke Thompson (@ltthompso) August 19, 2021

Oh, it is endlessly amusing that partisans cannot compute that which doesn't fit neatly into a partisan framework.

— Noah Rothman (@NoahCRothman) August 19, 2021

That’s Berny’s problem. He doesn’t know what to do with himself when people don’t fit into the boxes he’s built for them.

https://t.co/S58GI54gqv pic.twitter.com/IBWI2kHxhf

— RBe (@RBPundit) August 19, 2021

In Berny Belvedere’s defense, though, Trump Derangement Syndrome notwithstanding, at least he’s not completely blind to Joe Biden’s flaws.

There are lots of people trying to exonerate Biden on here. I actually side with Biden's critics that he has been utterly disastrous this past week: https://t.co/TSxwljLo2f

— Berny Belvedere (@bernybelvedere) August 19, 2021

Biden’s been utterly disastrous for decades, but we’ll take it.

Belvedere was even willing to consider Luke Thompson’s case that the Biden administration’s disarray is unprecedented.

I disagree with key aspects of this thread but found it interesting and well-written. https://t.co/j8k4Jfu7Gi

— Berny Belvedere (@bernybelvedere) August 19, 2021

Maybe Berny should read it again, because we’re not really sure what there is to disagree with:

I cannot recall an instance during the Trump administration when the executive departments were so rudderless and unprepared for a foreseeable contingency – indeed an outcome in no small part of their own creation. https://t.co/Tgwd1Ig7Dv

— Luke Thompson (@ltthompso) August 19, 2021

We are not looking at a failure of presidential rhetoric or public leadership only, though I understand most political pundits couldn’t distinguish the middle cabinet from the sub-cabinet if their lives depended on it. We’re seeing a top to bottom SYSTEMIC failure.

— Luke Thompson (@ltthompso) August 19, 2021

The closest comparable set of recent events would probably be Katrina, and yet even there, FEMA was asked to compensate for state and municipal level failures of epic scale. This is entirely within the federal defense bureaucracy.

— Luke Thompson (@ltthompso) August 19, 2021

Indeed, this combines informational failures on the level of Iraq WMDs, with planning and preparation failures that well exceed Katrina – it’s as if they made their own hurricane. Noah’s maladministration charge is much bigger than being angry about what was said at Helsinki.

— Luke Thompson (@ltthompso) August 19, 2021

And hell, given everything we left behind, you can fold in the GAO scandal in the Obama years and STILL not capture the extent to which the people at the top of our government failed to gather, process, and act on readily available information.

— Luke Thompson (@ltthompso) August 19, 2021

I’ve groused a lot about the lexical fixations of American politics in the 21st century. It’s a huge problem because it blinds the commentariat to the actual machinery of government. But that’s what failed here. Not words. Human beings acting in their official capacities.

— Luke Thompson (@ltthompso) August 19, 2021

If Belvedere’s point is that fringe rhetoric about impeaching Biden is dumb, fine. If his point is that people are often hypocrites in politics, congrats on your first day off the back of the turnip truck. But the critique of @NoahCRothman is a complete non-sequitur.

— Luke Thompson (@ltthompso) August 19, 2021