At some point in our nation’s history, the president became our national grief counselor. When a natural disaster gains widespread attention, it is simply expected that the president go and meet victims, survey the damage, and so on.

One of those places is Maui, Hawaii, where at least 114 people were killed and another 850 remain missing after the deadliest wildfire in a century consumed Lahaina.

A presidential visit is rarely actually helpful to anyone, though. It’s just a political photo op that diverts resources to his security instead of helping the suffering. And it often devolves into bickering over what the president said or the facial expression he made or whatever other inane tripe is typical of the never-ending red vs. blue feud.

Ask George W. Bush. He knew that surveying the ground in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina wouldn’t actually help anyone, so he flew over. He was summarily subjected to Leftmedia condemnation for supposed callousness, culminating with that infamously race-baiting line from Kanye West, who declared during a television fundraiser that “George Bush doesn’t care about black people.”

We know that disgraceful episode is more complicated than our distillation here, but it cemented the absolute necessity of a president putting his own boots on the ground after a disaster.

At the risk of getting muddy wrestling with the pig, we simply can’t let it pass that Joe Biden showed up in Hawaii and lied about his autobiography again. There are presidents who’ve made mistakes after disasters (Bush), and then there’s Biden.

“I don’t want to compare difficulties,” he told a small crowd in Maui, “but we have a little sense, Jill and I, what it’s like to lose a home.” He then recounted the “sunny Sunday” 15 years ago when lightning struck near his home, igniting a fire. “To make a long story short,” he said, “I almost lost my wife, my ‘67 Corvette, and my cat.” He has told that lie multiple times, previously claiming he “had a house burn down with my wife in it.”

The truth? The supposed raging inferno in his Delaware home was what the local fire department called “an insignificant fire” that was confined to the kitchen and quickly extinguished. Biden told the Maui audience that first responders “ran into flames to save my wife and save my family — not a joke.”

No, it’s not a joke, Mr. Biden. It’s sickening that you continue to tell lies in a transparently phony effort to connect with people. Instead, it ends up alienating them.

“There are no words in response to something like that,” marveled a teacher, who added, “I’m not voting for him again — that’s for sure.”

Not everyone was so composed. “This is the most despicable thing this president has ever said,” fumed one restaurant owner. “How do you compare almost losing your f***ing Corvette to the children burned in their f***ing homes, man?”

Biden would have been better off sticking with “no comment” than to lie like this, or to bizarrely joke about the “hot ground” while touring wildfire damage. It’s no wonder, after his visit, he responded to reporters asking if he could talk about his trip, “No, not now.” Sheesh.

Those are the mistakes of a cognitively disabled man. The lies? That’s a deeper matter.

His autobiographical lies are the stuff of legend. He recently insulted Gold Star families — families who have that star because his disgraceful surrender of Afghanistan led to the deaths of 13 American military personnel — when he told them his son Beau also came home “in a flag-draped coffin.” We’d certainly extend compassion to a man who lost his son to brain cancer, but don’t lie about it.

Biden also told Maui residents how his first wife and daughter and nearly two sons were killed in a tragic car accident just after he first won his Senate seat in 1972. He was sworn in from his sons’ hospital room. At least he didn’t repeat the awful lie he’s told about that before, that the truck driver “drank his lunch” when, in fact, the accident was his wife’s fault.

We’ve previously expressed compassion for him for those deaths, too. But you might wonder what normal, decent person would take his Senate seat in the wake of that kind of tragedy when his young boys needed him most. You might think it’d be a man who simply needed to keep working in order not to break down.

Perhaps it’s that, at least in part. For our part, the real concern is that Biden so desperately craves attention and power that he has made a long career out of pathological lies about himself — extending even to his hardships and tragedies. That’s a deeply distressing truth about the leader of the free world.