Feehery: The gang that couldn’t shoot straight

President Biden won his first Senate race in 1972, about a year after “The Gang Who Couldn’t Shoot Straight”, a movie based on the Jimmy Breslin novel, was released in theaters. 

Biden’s Senate career was much more successful than the movie, which bombed at the box office but lives on in the hearts and minds of columnists everywhere.

Breslin’s book detailed in hilarious fashion the incompetence of some third-rate mafiosos who couldn’t organize crime if their lives depended on it. The movie failed because it wasn’t very funny, much like the Biden administration. We would all be laughing if the stakes weren’t so high. 

It is incompetence, not incomprehension, that bedevils this current administration. Joe Biden is not senile. He is not losing it. He is not crazy. 

I heard him speak at an Irish American dinner a couple weeks ago, and in all fairness, he did a good job talking about his Irish roots and the importance of the Irish diaspora to American history. 

This is his sweet spot. Nobody does the Irish blarney better than Joe Biden. He has a talent for capturing the nostalgia of a bygone age, mostly because he is from that bygone age. For some, 80 is the new 50. For lunch-bucket Joe, 80 is the new 90. 

But as we saw over the weekend, when Biden ad-libs, the world quakes. 

He made three major gaffes over the weekend. First, he said that America would use our chemical weapons if Russia uses their chemical weapons, which is nice, except we don’t have any chemical weapons. Next, he told our troops stationed in Poland to get ready to go to Ukraine, except our troops aren’t going to go to Ukraine, unless the president knows something we don’t know. And third, he called for regime change in Russia, which isn’t our current policy. Demanding that Vladimir Putin be deposed would signify a significant escalation of our current conflict and would only make getting to a peace agreement even more difficult. 

These aren’t trivial mistakes. What we need right now is sure-handedness and steady diplomacy. What we are getting is more frayed nerves, itchier trigger-fingers and frustrated and scared allies who just want Joe to go back home.

Biden’s comments were worse, if that is possible, than the performance of his vice president a couple of weeks ago. Aside from nervously and inappropriately laughing at serious questions about life and death, Vice President Harris has shown herself to be hopelessly unprepared and remarkably uninformed when it comes to this worldwide crisis.

Biden’s selection of Harris to be his No. 2 only makes sense if you think in terms of his own self-preservation. There is no way you can remove me from office, the theory must go, because you will get her in my place. 

And yes, that theory does make sense, unless, of course, you do things like Biden did over the weekend, which is make things much, much more dangerous. 

Harris’s comments were silly but at least they weren’t dangerous.

Prosecutors are apparently now looking deeper into the Hunter Biden laptop scandal. This obviously has some implications for the president and his long-time viability to remain in office. 

Rep. Jeff Fortenberry (R), a member of Congress from Nebraska, was forced to resign from office because he mis-stated some facts in response to FBI inquiries into $30,000 in campaign contributions from a Nigerian businessman. 

If it becomes clear that Biden and his family not only lied about the contents of Hunter’s laptop but got a fortune in payments from foreign governments, who knows how long it will be before prosecutors start knocking on the president’s door. 

This is obviously all just speculation, and let’s hope that there are some innocent explanations about all of the sordid stuff found on the laptop.

But one thing is clear.  We have a gang that can’t shoot straight, and it is now in charge of running the country. Harris is bad, but at least her comments won’t get us on the precipice of World War III. As Biden would say, “God save us all.”

Feehery is a partner at EFB Advocacy and blogs at www.thefeeherytheory.com. He served as spokesman to former House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), as communications director to former House Majority Whip Tom DeLay (R-Texas), and as a speechwriter to former House Minority Leader Bob Michel (R-Ill.).