Joe Biden is unbelievably weak. He promised to govern as a trustworthy moderate who’d usher in a new age of Unity™. Instead we got Bernie Sanders but with dementia. Political analyst Charles C.W. Cooke eviscerates Biden for his utter inability to say “no” to anything the Left wants him to do.

As a presidential candidate, Biden promised to engage in a “battle for the soul of this nation.” As president, alas, he has surrendered each and every time he has been tested. Not once during his two-and-a-half-year tenure has he managed to stand firm in defense of his oath of office. Like Ado Annie Carnes, he is a guy who can’t say no. Into his office file the progressives, with their risible ideas and their self-serving claims, and, after a brief period of hemming and hawing, Biden either endorses their theories in outline, or, more often, does precisely what they want.

Court-packing, the filibuster, the CDC’s eviction moratorium, vaccine mandates, student loan forgiveness, maybe even raising the debt ceiling himself without waiting on Congress (even though the Republican House already passed a bill to do so). Cooke lists all of these things as examples of Biden saying one thing and then caving to the Left.

“Rumors to the contrary notwithstanding,” Cooke jokes, “‘No’ is an extremely easy word to say — far easier, in fact, than almost all of the others in the dictionary.” Biden can’t seem to say it.

Biden could have delivered this answer verbatim when he was asked if, despite having previously described the idea as a “boneheaded” notion favored by people who had been “corrupted by power,” he favored packing the Supreme Court. He could have delivered it verbatim when he was asked whether he supported the abolition of the same filibuster that he’d once characterized as a check “against the excesses of any temporary majority” that was opposed only by people hellbent on “tilting the playing field on the side of those who control and own the field.” He could have delivered it verbatim when he was asked whether he would agree to bypass Congress and impose an eviction moratorium that, having “kicked the tires” and “double, triple, quadruple checked,” he understood was “not likely to pass constitutional muster.” He could have delivered it verbatim when he was asked whether he would order a federal vaccine mandate that his own press secretary had confirmed was “not the role of the federal government.” He could have delivered it verbatim when he was asked whether he intended to side with progressive activists against the Department of Education, against a bewildered and emphatic Nancy Pelosi, and against the plain text of the U.S. Code, and transfer the liability for a trillion dollars of student debt to Americans taxpayers. He could have delivered it verbatim yesterday, when he was asked whether he intended to unconstitutionally bypass the legislative branch and raise the debt ceiling on his own.

“Biden didn’t do that, of course,” Cooke says. “Not even close.” He concludes:

It is all very well for presidents to give saccharine speeches about integrity and norms and the importance of the rule of law, but what really matters is whether they are willing to back them up with self-abnegating resolve when it is inconvenient to do so. Since he took office, President Biden has proven unwilling to do that at any point, and, over time, Americans have noticed.

Read the whole thing here.