CNN Chris Cillizza - Joe Biden is facing a crisis of competence
Seven months into his first term, however, Biden is faced with nothing short of a crisis of that competence, beset on a number of fronts with developments that it appears all of his experience and know-how didn't prevent.
The glaring example is, of course, the rapid takeover of Afghanistan by the Taliban in the wake of Biden's decision to pull American troops out of the country.
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The overwhelming message? The situation was totally and completely out of control -- and neither Biden nor his top foreign policy advisers could stop it.
While the crisis in Afghanistan is front and center in this reexamining of Biden's competence argument, it's far from the only data point in that conversation.
Remember back in May, Biden announced that the CDC had said vaccinated people no longer needed to wear masks indoors -- a development he described as a "great milestone?" Just two months later, however, Biden was forced to reverse himself amid a surge in cases caused by the Delta variant.
And while Biden was congratulating himself and the country this spring on the number of people who had been vaccinated against Covid-19, his administration came up short of its oft-stated goal of 70% of eligible adults with at least one shot of the vaccine by July 4.
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But there's no question that the dominant narrative of the late spring -- the Biden administration's competent management of a nationwide vaccine program and the retreat of the virus -- has taken a major hit.
Then there is the border. Arrests of those attempting to cross illegally at the US's southern border hit a two-decade high last month. Alejandro Mayorkas, the head of the Department of Homeland Security, admitted late last week that the US is facing a "serious challenge" at the border
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"The Biden administration has been caught between expressing compassion toward migrants and relying heavily on deterring those journeying to the US southern border. As a result, the border situation remains a political liability for the White House that is drawing criticism from both the left and the right."
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at the moment, chaos is winning over competence. And that is a major problem for Biden and his administration.
https://www.cnn.com/2021/08/16/polit...-19/index.html
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