PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN'S OWN BROWNIE MOMENT: KAMALA HARRIS IS DOING A GOOD JOB.

In his press conference on Thursday, the president praised his Vice President Kamala Harris and said that she is doing a good job. ICHEOKU says based on what, when all the indices say otherwise. It reminds ICHEOKU of former President George W. Bush and what he said to the then FEMA director Michael Brown during the Hurricane Katrina apocalypse, "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job". When President Bush made that statement, ICHEOKU thought that the former president was just being sarcastic, only to be later proved otherwise and you ask yourself, to what extent would presidents go to defend their minions, even if it meant to speak untruths in their defense. 

That President Joe Biden should similarly reflect so glowingly on his Vice President despite her gross ineptitude and lackluster performance in her one year in office, shows an unearned, unmerited and undeserved cheerleading of a boss for his lieutenant. This is a vice president who has not delivered on her assigned task to put a leash on illegal immigration running amok in the Southern border. This is a Vice President who has not delivered on another assigned task to midwife voting rights legislation to fruition. This is a Vice President who has refused to visit the Southern border, the epicenter of the immigration lost its mind in America, for a first hand assessment of the dire situation. 

Continuing, this is a Vice President who has not delivered on the Build Back Better infrastructure legislation task assigned to her by the president to nurse through the Congress. This is a Vice President who bungled her first foreign trip to Latin America countries and who failed woefully to articulate the position of her administration on illegal immigration and deliver same succinctly to her host governments during her visit. This is a Vice President who has not helped the president become a better president nor helped burnish his image, such that the president's favorability rating with American people now hovers in the low 30s percentile. This is a Vice President who cannot even manage her East Wing office, such that her office is bleeding staff too rapidly as none other before her. 

The number of her staff who have resigned just within their administration's one year in office is almost competing with the number of staff whose fate were severally sealed with the former President Donald John Trump's famed "You're fired" sporadic tweets. This is the Vice President who the president said is doing a good job. Unless good and bad have switched places in their meaning or have integrated into one and like the gender dystopia, no longer distinguishes nor discriminates amongst each other, what American people have witnessed of the Vice President's performance this past one year in office does not look like a good job. If what she is doing is a good job, what then qualifies as a bad job? 

What then qualifies for doing a bad job and what does doing a bad job really looks like, if the inability to successfully deliver on every given assignment and/or the failure to accomplish a given task now meets President Joe Biden's assessment of doing a good job. Although the president has enjoyed the benefit of low expectation right through his campaign and continuing to this date, but his description of the job which Vice President Kamala Harris is doing or rather not doing, as a good job, is a new low. It definitely sank the  expectations from the president into a bottomless abyss from which the president cannot go any lower. What a benchmark to set! 

Little wonder the vice president has the inglorious habit of laughing every serious thing off, aware that her boss is either afraid to criticize or confront her on her performance, or has since gone off the deep end mentally, such that he does not even know what is going on and/or enough to appreciate that his Vice President is just biding her time and not doing jack to help his administration. The fact that the president continues to add more duties to the plate of assignments of the Vice President is equally evident of a president who is no longer fully cognitive, otherwise why assign more responsibilities to a proven incompetent vice president who is yet to deliver on those assignments earlier given to her. 

It is only President Joe Biden, who in his infinite wisdom, thinks that such continuous delegations of his duties to a subordinate, who has not delivered on her previously assigned tasks nor shown the propensity and capacity to deliver them, is a smart idea. It is no longer a case of wondering who, between the president and the Vice President, is in charge in the White House. The speed at which things are unraveling indicates that none of them is in fact, actually in charge of the affairs as the president delegates so many things he should be doing himself to a Vice President who lacks the capacity to deliver them.

Many presidential candidates normally choose running mates who will be an asset to them and who could help them wage a successful campaign and thereafter, in running the government. How great an asset the then candidate Joe Biden thought that his now Vice President Kamala Harris would be, has been forced into the debate arena due to prevailing circumstance of her shown gross incompetence. The tumbling poll numbers of the president is a clear indicator that the Vice President is more of a weighted drag on the president rather than the expected helium-filled balloon that would usually lift the president up at times like this. 

Their 2020 political marriage of convenience by her selection as his running mate is unfortunately proving to be a case of two invalids who cannot help each other. If the president had the capacity and ability to perform many of these assignments which he delegates to the Vice President, he would not have handed them over to the Vice President. As it has turned out, the Vice President, who is supposed to be the president's knight in shinning armor come to the rescue, has herself become a definition and poster-girl of incompetence. An unpopular president often gets some reprieve from the popularity of the Vice President, but with Kamala Harris, it appears that the supposed medicine is even worse than the disease as her own poll numbers are approaching single digit.    

It is increasingly giving credence to that school of thought which has it that she has always used what she has to get what she wants; and that she literally laughed her way through life and up to where she is today. Their administration's case is a sad analogy to the tale of the two knives in the kitchen of a poor widow: one of the knives is sharp but has no handle and the other knife which has a handle is blunt and not sharp. If their union was at least a case of a blind person and a lame person navigating a rugged terrain, there will be some chance at their safely making it through as the blind will carry the lame and the lame will direct and guide them safely through. 

But the case of two blind persons or two lame persons embarked on the same treacherous journey, which America is currently saddled with, will be quite challenging a task to pull off, if not utterly impossible. How the administration eventually finishes its term in office remains a very fluid assessment; but if the last one year of the administration is any barometer, then the history of presidential administrations in America will not be kind to them. Not in any department have they performed brilliantly well enough and all their signature promised items have become mired in a failure to launch.

Madam Speaker Nancy Pelosi in a tweet yesterday reminded American people that when  President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris came into office one year ago, that our nation faced a dark and difficult moment from pandemic and economic crisis. But Madam Speaker did not tell the nation whether the "dark and difficult" moment had changed into "light and easy" moment, following their being sworn into office one year ago. Instead, the nation is now mired in a darker and more arduous existence, with a pandemic that is killing over one thousand American people daily and economic malaise that have seen many small businesses gone out of business or still closed; and millions of people still without jobs. 

The fog of despondency brought about by the Biden/Harris administration came in the shape of acute inflation which has sent cost of living expenses through the roof, simply becoming unaffordable in many cases, such that many Americans are now rationing meals and foregoing so many other aspects of living. Is this sudden drastic sea-change in living conditions, what Madam Speaker wants to compare with the situation in America, preceding January 20, 2021? Millions of American people, if they could, would gladly opt for what was, and would speedily go back to the life which they had before January 20, 2021.

Anyway, it will be interesting to see how the administration eventually saunters through the remainder of their term. The next three years will surely be exciting, in the negative sense that is; unless some sort of miracle happens. A miracle of a shift in policy direction which will change the current trajectory of affair in the land and make it possible for Americans to find themselves in their Emerald City. Not by using the same means as Dorothy in Wizard of Oz, but through a less cataclysmic approach of a deft good policies formulations and implementations, which will help restore America to its pre January 20, 2021 greatness, and back to the glory which Make America Great Again brought. 

ICHEOKU says American people crave for a return to the 2020 America as we once knew it: an America without empty shelves at grocery stores and other shops; an America where cost of living expenses and purchasing vehicles is once again reasonably affordable; an America where people are not too angry and too divided; an America that will not be under a cloud of fear and uncertainty; an America which will make Russia's President Vladimir Putin to once again quake in his boots and an America which we all can once again be optimistic for its future, as an abiding and strong and safe place to call home, where there is security and safety, and where people can easily find what they need and want to buy, whenever they so desire.  

It does not matter how much signaling the president sends out, telegraphing that his Vice President is better than him and that she is literally in charge and firmly in control of situation, American people are not buying it. The Vice President's too many fumbles so far, has left many American people less confident and more despondent and frightened about what will become of their America. It is apparent that the supposed co-pilot who has taken over the yoke of the plane and pretends that she can safely land it, does not even know how to fly a plane. ICHEOKU wishes the administration well and prays for the best to come and that the dark cloud over America shall lift quickly, so that we can see some sun rays again. It is well, America.