For most of the past month, the news cycle in the US was dominated by speculation concerning what an 81-year-old president might be planning about his and the nation’s future. The melodrama featured what appeared as comic moments, such as when the US president called Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy “President Putin.” Tragedy momentarily burst onto the literal stage with a nearly successful attempt to assassinate former President Donald Trump. But some dismissed even that as a comic interlude. On Sunday, Biden, curiously absent from the limelight, ended the dramatic suspense. Or did he?

Up to that point, political commentators had been wondering: “Is the melodrama we’re witnessing a comedy or a tragedy?” At times it resembled Shakespeare’s King Lear, a play in which an elderly ruler hesitates about leaving the reins of power to the next generation. But thanks to mistaken identities — Putin for Zelenskyy, “Vice President Trump” for “Kamala Harris” — and other well-delivered gaffes, it also recalled the Bard’s early play, The Comedy of Errors.

Now that the world has learned of Biden’s irrevocable decision, can we answer the question? Was it comedy or tragedy? We may only know when the final curtain falls on November 5.

On June 28, The New York Times editorial board surprised its readership and the American elite when it solemnly pronounced its negative verdict on Biden’s viability as a candidate. Though paradoxical, the new position of the editors, traditionally loyal to the Democratic establishment, made sense. They deemed the interest of the party they prefer — the Democrats — superior to the satisfaction of the ego of a president whose policies they unhesitatingly endorsed, even when it amounted to supporting a visible genocide.

Nevertheless, two weeks later on July 11, the paper’s chief White House correspondent, Peter Baker, not only entertained the idea that Biden need not obey the dictum of his newspaper but that the White House’s record-breaking senior citizen was capable of proving his capacity to lead the nation for another four years. NYT apparently needed to hedge its bets.

True to form, Baker’s article put its patented rhetorical strategy on full display as it developed its message of praise for Biden’s performance. “His voice, strong at first, grew a little weaker as he went along. But he had some forceful moments, got his points across and offered serious answers about NATO, Ukraine, Gaza, China and other major topics.”

In that pair of sentences, Baker employed four adjectives — strong, forceful, serious and major — designed to overcome one concession to Biden’s cognitive failure when he called the president’s voice at one point “weaker.”

Today’s Weekly Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Serious answers:

The preferred description used by partisan journalists to describe the most absurdly fanciful statements made by politicians of whom they approve.

Contextual note

What criteria for seriousness could Baker possibly be using when assessing politicians’ answers? Most people take the locution “serious answer” to contain two important ideas: honesty and sticking to facts. In today’s era of fake news that comes in every flavor, most people should have reached the rational conclusion that politicians have no “serious” interest in honesty.

As someone who has worked intimately with one American politician who throughout a long career cultivated a reputation for honesty, I can affirm that the sole interest of politicians is to defend whatever narrative, true or false, favors their electoral fortunes. A politician’s stance on honesty is similar to that of a corporate CEO, whose answers to questions from outsiders will infallibly reflect the executive’s fiduciary sense of duty to shareholder interest. In politics, the party establishment is the politician’s unique shareholder.

So let’s try and test Baker’s accuracy by analyzing the putative “seriousness” of Biden’s answers on foreign policy. Here are some essential points Biden made, transcribed verbatim.

“But I’ve made it clear, a strong NATO is essential to American security. And I believe the obligation of Article 5 is sacred.”

At an earlier NATO summit in his first year in office, Biden insisted on making “clear that the US commitment to Article Five of the NATO Treaty is rock solid and unshakable. It’s a sacred commitment. NATO stands together.” He is obviously attached to the adjective “sacred.” But can “sacred” be taken seriously in this context? Politicians constantly evoke God’s blessing on America, but does that mean just anything American can be deemed sacred?

Biden’s reference here is not trivial. He speaks of respecting a treaty. Washington considers all treaties sacred, doesn’t it? Alas, contemporary historians have noticed that US presidents and their governments sometimes show a strong penchant for withdrawing from even the most solemn commitments. Just ask any indigenous American with a vague awareness of their people’s struggle to survive on the continent they formerly occupied. The most obvious and recent example of betraying a sacred commitment was Trump’s precipitous withdrawal from both the Paris climate accords and the Iran nuclear deal. Some cite Biden’s chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan as another example.

Serious linguists and a lot of prominent international relations experts are likely to complain that the word “sacred” has no place in reference to military commitments or even diplomacy. It is a religious concept. A serious politician might, for example, justifiably use the adjective to describe the perception Palestinians have of Al Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem, a religious monument that Israeli settlers stormed days before October 7, 2023. They chose to violate its perceived sacredness. But Biden doesn’t take that kind of sacredness seriously. He prefers calling sacred the nation’s commitments to wage war.

Baker doesn’t seem too concerned about linguistic rigor. After all, we can think of Biden’s use of “sacred” as metaphorical and let the hyperbole pass. But what about facts? In the following meandering paragraph, does Biden propose any discernible “facts” in his analysis of what most people take to be a very serious topic: China?

“The issue is that you have to make sure that Xi understands there is a price to pay for undercutting both the Pacific basin as well as Europe as it relates to Russia and dealing with Ukraine. And so, we, for example, if you want to invest in China, you know, you know this area really well. China, you have to have a 51% Chinese owner. You have to make sure you do [it] by their rules, and you don’t have the authority, you have to provide access for all the data and information you have.”

What sense can anyone make of this? Can a political leader “undercut” “a basin?” As for the rest of the paragraph, it hints at one recognizable aspect of reality, but it simply does not sound “serious.”

So, Biden’s out and, for the moment, Kamala’s in. The question Democrats will now have to deal with is this: Is the heiress to the throne, capable of producing word salads that offer more clarity explanation concerning investment in China? And then there’s the real question: Can those word salads translate into effective policy?

Historical note

In his press conference, Biden spoke the words NATO delegates wanted to hear. “I made it clear that I will not bow down to Putin. I will not walk away from Ukraine. I will keep NATO strong. That’s exactly what we did and exactly what we’ll continue to do.”

Whether he said this seriously or not, it poses a new problem with regard to Biden’s honesty concerning both the past and the future. Biden speaks as if his promises are “sacred.” As an early promoter of George W. Bush’s wars in the Middle East, Biden turned out to be the president who actually did “walk away” from Afghanistan. Why should anyone believe he or the next president will not walk away from Ukraine? Should they believe Biden or any Democrat concerning such a promise? Especially as Trump has intimated in no uncertain terms that he”s ready to do the opposite.

The real question facing the Democrats going forward is this: Can they collectively come up with any “serious answers” to Donald Trump, a man who, through his deep contempt for seriousness and commitment to hyperreal fantasy is clearly the competitor with the most “serious” chance of winning in November?

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of Fair Observer Devil’s Dictionary.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.