The Main Event
Wassup
Last time I made an issue out of the silence surrounding presidential heir apparent Michelle Obama.
I also said this little mystery is only part of a much larger issue. Here’s the problem. The United States does not have a President and there’s no way to fix that until more than a year from now. Why is anyone thinking about, talking about, Michelle at all? Because she’s the Democrats’ hopeful first step out of a quagmire they outsmarted themselves into back in 2020, when they picked Kamala Harris for their Vice Presidential candidate. (Outsmarted themselves or Barack Obama did.)
Faced with finding a VP candidate for Joe Biden, the Dems had three different vulnerabilities to worry about. Their POTUS candidate was clearly old, visibly and behaviorally so, raising the possibility that he might not survive a term in the Oval Office. He also had two weaknesses (at least) in his base within the Party. He had close historic associations with former members of the Klan he befriended in his Senate days, and Trump was more popular with black voters than any modern Republican, confidently enough to ask directly for their votes. Perhaps less worrying but still notable was Joe’s tendency to be overfamiliar with much younger females in public, notorious for his odd habit of sniffing their hair.
The age versus shoring up the base choice was stark. There were no Democrat women who could serve as the reliable backstop ready to jump in if the president died or had to be removed for 25th Amendment frailties. Hillary was a political goner, whether she knew it or not. Dems had just spent five years pursuing Trump for alleged crimes Hillary was actually guilty of and had been let off for by a Clinton-friendly DOJ. Bringing her back would highlight that gross hypocrisy. Beyond that, the age problem clearly spotlighted the fact that there was no Democrat bench of President-capable candidates. All the Dem congressional leadership was also old: Pelosi, Schumer, Steny Hoyer, Dick Durbin, Dianne Feinstein. Their great futures were all in the past, as was once said of the historic exception to a lot of rules, Winston Churchill.
Others in the candidate pool that had led to Biden as the fallback candidate were in their own ways as controversial and potentially divisive as Trump. Sanders was old and a known Communist, Bloomberg was old and an unpopular NY billionaire, Elizabeth Warren was a gaffe-prone lefty and a national joke for her Native American heritage claims, Pete Buttigieg was a small city mayor and married to a man, Beto O’Rourke was just weird, and Amy Klobuchar, Tulsi Gabbard, and Kamala Harris were all three undistinguished members of Congress, more famous for being women than presidential timber.
The Biden decision (or the private junta that was making such decisions) therefore blew past the age issue, having decided that Biden would campaign from his Delaware basement, and sought the best Veep candidate to improve Joe’s attractiveness to blacks and women. They made no secret of this in fact. It was announced, as if it were great news, that whoever the VP candidate turned out to be, she would be female and black. Whoopee. But when they started shopping around, the only officeholder they found from their affirmative action list who would not actively repel large blocs of voters based on past scandals and other outrages was Kamala Harris. She had only one moment of unpleasant national public exposure, her harsh questioning of Bret Kavanaugh in his Senate confirmation hearings. But, hey, the women whose votes we want to lock up might go for that. And her penchant for nastiness might prove useful in going after the Trump Deplorables in the election campaign. Hail Kamala!
They got away with it. Kamala was not an effective campaigner. She was almost as invisible as Joe in his basement, but the Dems were able to steal the election without winning it. So far so good. Except that as a serving Vice President, Kamala has been a disaster, even more unpopular than Old Joe. She was given nominal authority for things she proceeded to do nothing about, like the border crisis issue and national voting reform. She has also proven out her Senate record as a terrifically hard person to work for. Her staff keep quitting, especially speechwriters it would seem, because her public utterings have given rise to a new meme, the “word salad,” which consists of incoherent repetition of empty words and phrases, delivered in the style of a kindergarten teacher instructing her students in the correct steps for staying in line or staying close to the group on a field trip.
Mostly funny, right? The popular humor had it that Kamala was Biden’s insurance policy, because no one would dare to invoke the 25th Amendment knowing that he would be succeeded by someone even dumber, without Alzheimers as an excuse. Except…
Except that we are there. At the precipice of a clear need for a resort to the 25th Amendment. Engaged in one dangerously provocative proxy war, Ukraine, we are now on the verge of a second even more dangerous proxy and/or shooting war that could eventually include Hezbollah, Iran, Syria, and other Russian client states. The possibility exists for an honest-to-God World War III which could easily result in nuclear confrontations, brinksmanship, and retaliation decisions. Overseen by a Commander-in-Chief who was not even awakened for news of the Hamas attack on Israel but informed of it half a dozen or more hours later, at his usual wakey-wakey time.
How do we know that this is a real moment of presidential and constitutional crisis? That all the reassurances we’ve been given by Biden’s doctors and the feckless New York Times about Biden’s fundamentally sound cognition condition are outrageous, near-treasonous lies? Two words. Michelle Obama.
The fact that there has been sudden “talk” of a possible Michelle presidential nomination in the past couple of months is no accident. Even WAPO and the NYT have had to concede, grudgingly, in print that Biden might not be fit enough to finish a second term. The truth is, they know damn well he isn’t fit now. There’s only one reason to bring Michelle out of the woodwork and start turning the chatterboxes loose on the idea of her possible candidacy in 2024: Kamala Harris. No one’s worried that voter disenchantment with Biden would result in a successful challenge for the nomination by speech-challenged Kennedy or Vice President Harris. But President Harris is another story. As an Oval Office incumbent and wartime CIC, she could easily strong-arm the opposition for the nomination and then lose horrifically to Donald Trump in the general.
Now for the nub. The hard question. Why would Kamala be an incumbent President? For the simple reason that not invoking the 25th Amendment sometime soon could make the Democrat political situation irretrievably worse, legally, constitutionally, and, oh yeah, in terms of massive, even catastrophic loss of American lives.
It was Hillary Clinton who shone a new spotlight on “the 3 am phone call” she flunked miserably herself with Benghazi. But the importance of that call is a reality, most especially when the stakes are nuclear.
To my knowledge (admittedly imperfect), I’m the only one that has been deeply concerned about this issue since Putin first started offering up hints about his willingness to use nuclear weapons if sufficiently provoked by events in Ukraine. I wrote about it at some length to my readers at Facebook. They didn’t care. I got only one comment, telling me it was in the Lord’s hands and not worth worrying about.
Some years before, I had had a profoundly affecting dream. More a vision than a dream, spectacular, unprovoked by the day’s events, not an obvious rework of personal paranoia. Just a brief glimpse of a nuclear event from the perspective of the Main Street of my hometown. I was even moved to record it as an illustration, so that I might one day share it with others if need be.
When I heard the timeline of Biden’s notification of, and response to, the Hamas crisis, I felt an immediate sense of urgency. So much so that I wrote a FB message to an investigative reporter/pundit of my acquaintance. The message said, in part:
Something for you to write a column about, given your greater reach and wider audience. Twice in the last six months I have specifically raised the question of who controls the nuclear football, which directly raises the issue of who’s in charge, who will be making cataclysmic decisions about WWIII type stuff. Nobody responded to my questions then. But those questions are important as hell. Somebody we didn’t elect to be CIC is probably going to be at the helm when the shit hits the fan. Biden wasn’t told about the Hamas attack till next morning. He’s not a decision maker. You can work out the logistical complexities as well as I can.
Isn't this a matter of national security above all others? Shouldn’t this be a major story in the media? Shouldn’t all of us care, a lot, about what will happen, who will do what, when, under what authority and with what expert(?) guidance and relevant experience, in what exact physical setting? I’m just a guy living inside an upside down kitchen glass being stared at by deaf mutes. You’ve got an audience, connections, a whistle to blow at least. I don’t care about credit, mentions, anything like that. I care about the fact that we have a right to know, especially, now, who’s taking that famous 3 am call and why they’re taking that call. Run with it. I’m happy to read about it when you raise the alarm.
[I got a prompt response. A thank you and a diagnosis that the one to blame is a Valerie Jarrett. So I dashed off a followup.
The who is Important, but not as important as the what? WHAT EXACTLY WILL HAPPEN, UNDER WHOSE LEGAL AUTHORITY, AND EXACTLY HOW when a nuclear crisis hits? This requires a “FailSafe”-like attention to detail. Will it be legal, will it be thought through, or will it be treated like a PR stunt in the hands of venal dimwit political operatives? Shouldn’t the American people be informed of the size and complexity of the mess such an incident would be? Benghazi, Afghanistan Surrender, Pipeline Bombing… etc. It’s not an Op-Ed. It’s a WTH.
That was well over a week ago. I’ve heard nothing back from my correspondent. I glossed over the logistical complexities in my message, assuming the knowledge and imagination were there. What I think needs particular emphasis is the likelihood of both 1) grave decision making error, and 2) an effective military coup against the U.S. Government.
The call comes. This time it’s notification of possible nuclear confrontation with a world leader almost as old and unsteady as Biden. Whatever the inner circle is, it gathers in the Situation Room. The President is not there, even if he’s physically present. He will not be involved in the policy debate or the conversations on the red phone or with weapons commanders. The meeting — and it is a meeting, not a CIC convening of direct reports for input to his final decision — begins the same way decision making meetings have occurred since Day One of the Biden Presidency. The Chief of Staff is probably the de facto chairman, but the insiders or their proxies are equally competitive for controlling the policy debate.
For close to three years now, these “kitchen cabinet” decision processes have been driven almost exclusively by the need to provide cover for the enfeebled figurehead President while carrying out the agreed-upon policy agenda delivered from on high by someone not in the room, then or now, and getting away with it in PR and media terms, which are almost but not exactly the same thing. Some outcomes the NYT wouldn’t blink at will occasionally piss off big chunks of the plebeians in flyover country. Overall, the prime consideration in every participant’s mind is, how will this look?
What’s different this time is not that question but the realities of military logistics, physical consequences, chains of commands, the procedures outlined in the famous nuclear “football.” Who must do what, under whose final verbal command, and exactly how in what legally defined order. That’s why the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs is there this time. Not in his usual position as PR flack for the administration’s mercurial policy gyrations but as the only technical expert about nuclear warfare in the room. (Thank God, this time it won’t be Mark Milley, whose conduct in office already smacked of Seven Days in May treason, but we have no guarantee that the proposed new guy, more BLM than true-blue American, would be different except in possible avenues of disastrous error.)
It’s easy to imagine a point at which the usual members of the committee-in-charge — Susan Rice, Valerie Jarrett, Dr. Jill, whatsisname the Chief of Staff, Blynken, Austin, whoever — throw up their hands in confused indecision and vote to pass logistical authority to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. This is the exact moment at which the U.S. Government has been overthrown by a military coup. Every decision and action that occurs after this is illegal, unconstitutional, and politically fatal to the Democrats if there’s anything left after a probable nuclear exchange.
Do your homework. Watch the movies FailSafe, Seven Days in May, and Dr. Strangelove. They’re not predictors of events but of the crazy when there is actually a President still somewhat aware of being in charge and the stakes are millions of lives and the survival of the nation.
This particular 3 am call must be avoided. Biden cannot knowingly command the use of nuclear weapons. He is not mentally competent to fulfill this most critical responsibility of the Presidency. Without this, any decision of any kind about nuclear weapons, even stand-down, is illegal. Such decisions cannot be made by a committee vote by unelected civilians or by a military officer acting on his own without a clear order by the Commander-in-Chief. Somebody in even this screwball White House (or beyond it, ahem) knows this. The 25th Amendment must be invoked.
Why are we mentioning Michelle Obama in this discussion? Because she is the cover for the need to make Kamala Harris President of the United States. Kamala can be bullied into making a conscious decision that agrees with the committee or the egomaniacal general in the room. She can be pampered through other parts of her job the same way Joe has been, like a toddler led from bed to bath to basement day by day. But the Democrat faithful, particularly the all-important women’s vote, has to be reassured to stick with the program. Michelle is the solution to that problem. She is more popular among women by far than Kamala is now. The knowledge that a woman with the magic last name of Obama is standing by will build her support, political and personal, to a level Kamala cannot survive even as an incumbent. The day will be saved.
Why didn’t they pick her for VP in the first place back when they settled on Kamala instead? Because Michelle Obama has absolutely zero qualifications to be President. She has never held office, she has never held a real job with profit responsibility, she has never even practiced law with her one credential of a Harvard degree. Her apparent talents are confined to shopping, jet-set travel and vacationing, and a public face that alternates between sullen and phony friendly.
But she will be able to be nominated, elected, and in charge as President. Why her husband has carefully stage-managed this set of circumstances. A Michelle Obama presidency will be an even more obvious Barack Obama term than the Biden term has been.
Note that I said “able to be” elected, not guaranteed. She is, after all, totally unqualified for the job on paper. She is also extremely mockable, although this might not be the easy mark it looks at the moment. Still, we can hope that single moms won’t relate as automatically to this silver spoon candidate as WAPO and the NYT are probably assuming.
Why haven’t we been hearing from Michelle about her views on the current crisis? Because that part of the narrative is still being written on the fly by Barack Obama. We’ll hear from her when he’s ready.
In the long term, her candidacy can be opposed and possibly defeated. I’m not nearly as optimistic about that 3 am phone call or the lives of 330 million Americans.