Charlotte City Councilman Tariq Bokhari /Handout via REUTERS
As communities across the Southeast reel from Hurricane Helene, America faces an unsettling question: Who, exactly, is in charge at the White House?
At least 100 people are confirmed dead across the Southeast, a number likely to rise as some 600 remain missing.
Some 2 million homes and businesses still had no power as of Monday.
Florida was able to give evacuation notices in advance, but towns in Appalachia were completely blindsided by flooding and landslides that decimated whole communities and washed out roads, leaving residents stranded and cut off from emergency crews.
Who’s making the decisions back in Washington? Who can Americans look to for leadership after a record-breaking natural disaster?
Certainly not President Biden: He gave lethargic, scripted remarks Monday, during which (again!) he claimed to “have a cold,” and then snapped at a reporter who asked why he was holed up in his vacation home in Delaware and not in Washington during the worst of the storm.
“It’s called a telephone,” Biden barked.
And of course his mental decline plainly continues, even if he’s rarely ever in the public eye.
Last Wednesday, he welcomed world leaders “to Washington” while in Midtown Manhattan; Thursday, he called Kamala Harris his “boss” and GOP veep candidate Sen. JD Vance “Secretary Vance of Ohio.”
Asked Sunday about Israel’s “strikes in Yemen,” he told reporters that he’s a strong supporter of “the collective bargaining effort” to avert a longshoreman’s strike of East Coast ports.
Biden is not all there, so who is calling the shots?
His chief of staff, or a larger cabal of White House aides?
First Lady Jill Biden, who on Friday led “Joe’s” first Cabinet meeting in 11 months?
Veep Kamala Harris, who should take over as president “if” Biden is incapacitated, has instead put her efforts into distancing herself from the Biden-Harris administration, lest voters recall that she’s not much of a “change” candidate after all.
Yes, she took a break from campaigning Monday to return to Washington, made a show of being briefed by FEMA and even delivering some empty remarks.
But it all comes off as rote, just like the photo her campaign posted of her posing “deep in thought” on Air Force Two, albeit with headphones that looked unplugged and taking “notes” on a blank sheet of paper.
Don’t look for Harris to step up and take charge now: She doesn’t want real responsibility (worse yet) or accountability.
It’s Biden’s assigned role to take the blame for any disaster-relief failures.
The thousands of Americans now facing destitution and homelessness and grieving the loss of friends, family and neighbors deserve competent, visible, trustworthy leadership.
Too bad the White House can’t offer any such thing until at least Jan. 20.