{"id":18725,"date":"2023-11-09T11:46:25","date_gmt":"2023-11-09T16:46:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/?p=18725"},"modified":"2023-11-09T12:50:06","modified_gmt":"2023-11-09T17:50:06","slug":"our-potemkin-presidency","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2023\/11\/09\/our-potemkin-presidency\/","title":{"rendered":"Our Potemkin Presidency"},"content":{"rendered":"

Our Potemkin Presidency<\/a>\"\"<\/a><\/h1>\n

by James Bovard<\/p>\n

November 8, 2023
\nThe Founding Fathers sought to create a government that would be under the law and under the Constitution. Since World War One, presidents have amassed far more arbitrary power to rule by decree. Every recent American commander-in-chief has expanded and exploited the dictatorial potential of the presidency. Yet, because elections continue to be regularly held, most Americans do not think of the nation\u2019s chief executive as a despot.<\/p>\n

For generations, American politicians spoke reverently of the Constitution as America\u2019s highest law. In the 1800s, presidential candidates would compete by attesting their fidelity to the nation\u2019s founding document. But in recent years, the Constitution has fallen into disrespect. The rule of law now means little more than the enforcement of the secret memos of the commander-in-chief.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Power has been concentrated in the White House in part because the friends of Leviathan favor policies that cannot survive the light of day or open debate in the halls of Congress.<\/strong> Pundits pretend the system remains on automatic pilot to serve the citizenry just like in the early days of the American republic. They offer a mystic variation of the movie Field of Dreams: \u201cGather all the power, and the noble leader will come.<\/strong>\u201d<\/p>\n

Wild-eyed optimism about the character and competence of American presidents should have received far more ridicule, but what happens when the absurdities become too great to hide?<\/p>\n

This has been a problem in the United States for most recent presidents, but the issue is most intense with the current chief executive.<\/p>\n

Sleepy Joe\u2019s rapid decline<\/strong><\/p>\n

President Biden seems increasingly distanced from the day-to-day duties of his office. In June at the Air Force Academy graduation in Colorado, Biden stumbled leaving the podium and hit the platform as hard as if he\u2019d been dropped from a low-flying helicopter. It took multiple Secret Service agents to eventually get the president back on his feet.<\/p>\n

Visiting Japan for a summit in May, Biden uncorked a 40-second utterly incoherent answer to a question that mystified even his biggest devotees. Some commentators speculated that the jet lag and time difference undermined the drugs that Biden routinely takes to spur apparent mental sharpness.<\/p>\n

In a bizarre finish for a recent MSNBC puff piece appearance, Biden practically jumped out of his chair and shuffled off stage like a hungry geezer responding to the dinner bell at the nursing home.<\/p>\n

Biden took off almost the entire month of August for vacation. His repose was interrupted by a brief visit to Maui, the scene of a horrific fire that had left hundreds dead and thousands homeless. Biden pirouetted in front of the audience and claimed a minor kitchen fire that occurred in his Delaware home a few decades earlier \u2014 in which he almost lost his cat, his 1967 Corvette, and his wife \u2014 was on par with the devastation suffered by Maui residents. Political leaders in Hawaii were covering up a vastly higher death toll than they admitted \u2014 and many if not most of the fatalities were due to profound government failures.<\/p>\n

By the end of August, Biden \u201cspent all or part of 382 of his presidency\u2019s 957 days \u2014 or 40 percent \u2014 on personal overnight trips away from the White House, putting him on pace to become America\u2019s most idle commander-in-chief,\u201d the New York Post reported. Rep. Elise Stefanik complained, \u201cViolent crime is surging. Inflation is crushing hard-working Americans\u2026. Meanwhile, Joe Biden is filmed on the beach with his handlers preventing him from speaking to the media to answer basic questions Americans deserve answers to.\u201d Heritage Foundation\u2019s Joel Griffith observed, \u201cWith President Biden, it\u2019s not only that he\u2019s absent in mind, he\u2019s increasingly absent in body.\u201d<\/p>\n

Will Biden\u2019s handlers be able to convince enough Americans that Biden is up to the task for four more years for a second term?<\/p>\n

America\u2019s own Potemkin village<\/strong><\/p>\n

In eighteenth-century czarist Russia, a fake village was built by a Russian governor named Grigory Aleksandrovich Potemkin to deceive Catherine the Great about the condition of the peasants she ruled. \u201cPotemkin Village,\u201d according to Time magazine, \u201csignifies any deceptive or false construct, conjured often by cruel regimes, to deceive both those within the land and those peering in from outside.\u201d In today\u2019s Washington, the media is partnering with Team Biden to concoct a Potemkin Village to deceive Americans about Biden\u2019s faltering fitness for office.<\/p>\n

The White House built a fake Oval Office equipped with a teleprompter for Biden\u2019s announcements. But the president struggles reading routine words aloud like an Arkansas television anchor grappling with five-syllable names of East European cities.<\/p>\n

Biden has gotten lost on stage so many times that WAZE should create a special app for Joe to navigate his next steps.<\/strong> The Atlantic noted last year that Biden\u2019s \u201caides look visibly nervous at times\u201d when he is giving a public speech. What do they know that we don\u2019t?<\/p>\n

Biden has stumbled several times going up the steps to Air Force One. White House staff \u201cfixed\u201d that problem by having the president take the short stairway into the plane\u2019s belly to \u201creduce the risk of a televised fall that goes viral,\u201d NBC News reported. As long as Biden is not being loaded onto the plane via a hydraulic medical lift, the media will pretend there is nothing to see. Thus far, much of the media has responded to Biden\u2019s falls by scrambling to put him back on his feet while proclaiming, \u201cNothing to see here, move along.\u201d<\/p>\n

Biden often seems detached from reality, such as his false claim that he swayed Congress to enact his federal student loan forgiveness scheme. At a White House summit last September, Biden repeatedly called out for a dead congresswoman to come to the podium, forgetting that his political ally had died in a car crash. And then there is Joe\u2019s ludicrous assertions that his son \u201cdid nothing wrong.\u201d But Hunter admitted guilt in a corrupt wrist-slap plea bargain that collapsed when an honest federal judge asked a few simple questions about the political fix.<\/p>\n

\u201cJoe Biden\u2019s age is his superpower,\u201d according to Biden reelection campaign co-chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg. In reality, Biden\u2019s \u201csuperpower\u201d is a craven media that shamelessly pretends he is mentally and physically fit for another five years of the presidency. Biden won in 2020 in part because the media enabled his \u201cbasement campaign strategy\u201d \u2014 purportedly because COVID made mass gatherings unsafe except when denouncing the police.
\nWho really runs the show?<\/p>\n

Perhaps the biggest Potemkin Village nowadays is the pretense that Biden is actually in charge of the federal government and national policy. Major media outlets assiduously avoid even recognizing the curtain hiding the D.C.\u2019s actual power brokers. Who is actually making the decisions?<\/p>\n

\u201cShut up \u2014 it\u2019s for your own good,\u201d is the tacit elite media response.<\/p>\n

\u201cHow do we know?\u201d Americans wonder.<\/p>\n

\u201cTrust us \u2014 we are insiders who had higher SAT scores than you did\u201d \u2014 the ultimate Beltway proof.<\/p>\n

Who is pulling Biden\u2019s strings?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Perhaps Biden spends so much time away from the White House because the Secret Service has effectively declared that Americans have no right to know who is meeting with or manipulating the president on the road or in Delaware. The Secret Service pretends that the Freedom of Information Act doesn\u2019t pertain to revealing who is pulling presidential strings.<\/p>\n

House Oversight Committee chairman James Comer complained, \u201cWith the amount of time this president is spending away from the White House, visitor records should be made public from all of Joe Biden\u2019s residences. Americans deserve the transparency they were promised from the Biden administration. All they are getting is obstruction.\u201d<\/p>\n

Deferring to the media\u2019s \u201cno problem\u201d storyline is folly considering the sordid record of the press corps betraying truth to snare Oval Office access. In 1919, President Woodrow Wilson was left partially paralyzed and mentally incapacitated from a severe stroke. In 1920, New York World reporter Louis Seibold scored the first interview with Wilson after his illness. As historian Thomas Fleming wrote:<\/p>\n

Delighted by a chance to get on the front page, Seibold collaborated shamelessly with the scam. The reporter told how delighted he was to find the president almost his old self. He joshed with him about running a footrace in a month or two; he would give the president a modest handicap because of his \u2018slight limp.\u2019 (In fact, Wilson\u2019s whole left side remained paralyzed.)<\/p>\n

Seibold claimed he saw Wilson \u201ctransact the most important functions of his office with his old-time decisiveness, method, and keenness of intellectual appraisement.\u201d Brazenly lying about Wilson\u2019s competence won Seibold the 1921 Pulitzer Prize \u2014 a sham that has been almost completely forgotten by today\u2019s media poohbahs.<\/p>\n

Flash forward a couple decades and the press corps propagated the sham that President Franklin Roosevelt was fit for another term \u2014 even though he was obviously dying of congestive heart failure and other illnesses by late 1944. He tumbled badly while walking down an aisle at the 1944 Democratic National Convention but that was airbrushed from his triumphal path to a fourth term. As professor David Welky wrote in 2020,<\/p>\n

Democratic power brokers also understood the situation, although most held their tongues or waited several years before revealing their concerns. They had insisted on replacing the sitting vice president, the ultraliberal Henry Wallace, with the more moderate Harry S. Truman in part because they doubted Roosevelt would live until 1948, or believed that he would resign before his term ended\u2026. In a sense, Roosevelt\u2019s presidency had been one long deception. Americans knew he had survived polio and were vaguely aware of his restricted mobility, but they had never seen him in the wheelchair he used every day.<\/p>\n

How many Biden \u201csenior moments\u201d has the White House press corps covered up? Thanks to a Judicial Watch lawsuit, Americans belatedly learned this week that Biden\u2019s German Shepherd \u201cCommander\u201d attacked seven Secret Service agents late last year and early this year. If Americans didn\u2019t even hear about Biden\u2019s dog badly mauling a Secret Service agent, what are the chances we hear about all of Biden\u2019s own stumbles?<\/p>\n

The Biden presidency increasingly resembles the final boxing matches of former heavyweight champion Muhammad Ali.<\/strong> Ali would lie on the ropes and get pounded senseless before referees would belatedly end the fight. But it is Americans\u2019 rights and prosperity that are being pounded as Biden is led to one pathetic photo opportunity after another.<\/p>\n

The media may help Biden dodge political debates, frequent public appearances, or even interviews with anyone who refuses to kowtow. But it is a riverboat gamble whether Biden\u2019s worsening debility can be hidden until November 2024. The most recent Associated Press national poll revealed that \u201c77 percent of adults think Biden, 80, is too old to effectively serve for four more years, with 89 percent of Republicans holding that view and 69 percent of Democrats.\u201d<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, Biden\u2019s condition will likely spark fierce partisan conflicts with scant lessons taken. The current American system of government is incoherent without assuming great capacities in the ultimate boss. But collusion between politicians and the media suppress the truth about incapacity in the White House.<\/strong> This problem existed long before Biden, and it will continue after he returns to Delaware for his final vacation.<\/p>\n

This article was originally published in the November 2023 issue of Future of Freedom.<\/p>\n

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The Wall Street Journal called Bovard \\\"the roving inspector general of the modern state\\\" and Washington Post columnist George Will called him a \\\"one-man truth squad.\\\" His 1994 book, Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty, received the Free Press Association\u2019s Mencken Award as Book of the Year. His Terrorism & Tyranny won the Lysander Spooner \\\"Best Book on Liberty in 2003\\\" award. He received the Thomas Szasz Award for Civil Liberties work, awarded by the Center for Independent Thought and the Freedom Fund Award from the Firearms Civil Rights Defense Fund of the National Rifle Association. Bovard\u2019s writings have been publicly denounced by FBI director Louis Freeh, the Secretary of Agriculture, the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, the Postmaster General, and the chiefs of the U.S. International Trade Commission, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, as well as by many congressmen and other malcontents.\",\"sameAs\":[\"http:\\\/\\\/www.jimbovard.com\",\"https:\\\/\\\/www.facebook.com\\\/jim.bovard\",\"https:\\\/\\\/x.com\\\/jimbovard\"],\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/jimbovard.com\\\/blog\\\/author\\\/admin\\\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Our Potemkin Presidency - James Bovard","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2023\/11\/09\/our-potemkin-presidency\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Our Potemkin Presidency - James Bovard","og_description":"Our Potemkin Presidency by James Bovard November 8, 2023 The Founding Fathers sought to create a government that would be under the law and under the Constitution. Since World War One, presidents have amassed far more arbitrary power to rule by decree. 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The Wall Street Journal called Bovard \"the roving inspector general of the modern state\" and Washington Post columnist George Will called him a \"one-man truth squad.\" His 1994 book, Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty, received the Free Press Association\u2019s Mencken Award as Book of the Year. His Terrorism & Tyranny won the Lysander Spooner \"Best Book on Liberty in 2003\" award. He received the Thomas Szasz Award for Civil Liberties work, awarded by the Center for Independent Thought and the Freedom Fund Award from the Firearms Civil Rights Defense Fund of the National Rifle Association. Bovard\u2019s writings have been publicly denounced by FBI director Louis Freeh, the Secretary of Agriculture, the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, the Postmaster General, and the chiefs of the U.S. International Trade Commission, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, as well as by many congressmen and other malcontents.","sameAs":["http:\/\/www.jimbovard.com","https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/jim.bovard","https:\/\/x.com\/jimbovard"],"url":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/author\/admin\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18725","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18725"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18725\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18728,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18725\/revisions\/18728"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15885"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18725"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18725"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18725"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}