WashPost Puffs Biden for Devotion to Funerals, Eulogies (But No Time for a Border Trip?)

Although President Biden may appear to be failing in inflation, border control, and COVID issues, The Washington PostHe continues to create positive profiles in order to look more likeable and relatable than Donald Trump. A Saturday sugar bomb was the most recent. PostAnnie Linskey, reporter on Biden’s enthusiastic attendance at funerals as well as his devotion to eulogies. He is one tough guy. 

Biden’s favorite way of expressing gratitude to his colleagues (especially Republicans) is to repeat his core message, that America must go back to a more polarized time in which political enemies did not need to be personal friends.

But not all people believe that this era can still be saved. And in a sense, Biden’s attendance at these events highlights the extent to which practitioners of that kind of politics are increasingly passing from the scene.

Online headline: “Biden funerals and an America gone by.” Linskey points out that Biden attends Republican funerals. These include those of moderates such as John Warner and Colin Powell. To make it sound even more gross, she invites Bill Kristol. It was then tweeted 

“Can you imagine some Democratic senator wanting to go to Josh Hawley’s funeral or Ted Cruz’s?” @BillKristolTells @AnnieLinskey. “Not to be macabre about it, but in 20 years that would be the equivalent.” https://t.co/oiXoVMd7kd

— Michael Kruse (@michaelkruse) January 8, 2022

If the objective was to return to a less polarized age, why are we here? PostIs it a way to get polarizers into your quotes? The idea is to pretend that “we’re no polarizers.

Even the Post includes a link for a 2019 puff article that makes similar arguments about Biden’s virtues (and political intelligences). Linskey continued:

Allies argue that Biden’s focus on grief and empathy is particularly important for the country at a moment where more than 800,000 lives have been lost to the pandemic. His tendency to attend funerals and offer eulogies is a long-standing part of his political identity, much like the way that other politicians call their supporters when they turn 50.

It’s a stark contrast particularly with former president Donald Trump, who has famously skipped significant commemoration services. Trump did not attend the service for John McCain, with whom he often tangled, at the insistence of the late senator’s family. Biden went to Arizona, where he was out of office at the time, to address it.

This is the toughest part of the story: “Biden’s attempts to connect with grieving families don’t always hit the mark. When the President greeted families of U.S. soldiers killed in the chaos withdrawal from Afghanistan in August, many family members complained that Biden dwelled too much on the past and made shallow remarks. To put it mildly, that is the truth.

Biden is not asked how he can organize all this and spend so much time on eulogies but can’t go to the border, as the White House suggests it would be logistically challenging. In October, Biden said in a CNN softball town hall “I’ve been there before, and I haven’t, I mean, I know it well. I guess I should go down…But the whole point of it is I haven’t had a whole hell of a lot of time to get down.”