Hunter Tries His Best

Would Joe Biden be president if it were not for Hunter?

Something tells me that’s not the case. No one who saw the fatal debate could possibly believe that he had a chance. In the longish history of televised politics, Biden’s performance was uniquely awful. “Meandering” doesn’t do it justice. You have to add stumbling, gnarled, and incoherent. It wasn’t a matter of graceless language. The problem is that there was no language to speak of. I knew it was over when Donald Trump raised the axe: “I really don’t know what he said, and I don’t think he does either.” You could see the head of the chicken fall off the stump.

That’s not to say that Hunter was blameless. Like the famous letter on Hester’s Prynne’s bodice, Hunter reminded the country of Joe Biden’s failings, even the ones Hunter had nothing to do with. But he gave Joe’s detractor’s plenty to talk about, from illegal firearms to florid debauchery. I wish I could un-see the whole Hunter picture show, but it feels like his life was invented by a tabloid: the ne’er-do-well brother indulged by a father who could never say no to a surviving son.

It was all too much for all the Bidens, with the result that Hunter dragged them down. The son who should have been shuttled off to Amsterdam to smoke weed for the rest of the Biden presidency kept turning up at the White House or on the beach at Rehoboth. When voters came to sense that he would be pardoned by his father, it was one more blow to Joe’s lackluster campaign.

Hunter, of course, says just the opposite. As you may have heard, he has just spoken about his father and the terrible injustice of the cancelled campaign. There isn’t anyone he doesn’t blame, with a rat-a-tat-tat of machine gun obscenities that make Donald Trump look like a piker. There’s the cabal of Obama people who never respected his father, and the apparatchiks who set Joe up for failure. He blames poor Jake Tapper for the tell-all expose and bothers to echo Sauron’s claim that Tapper’s ratings have declined precipitously. This is apparently because of what he said about Biden.

It’s hard to know what to make of this allegation, since all of us saw what Tapper saw, if not months of decline then at least the debate. As noted by everyone, it sealed the deal and nothing could have rescued the Biden candidacy. I half expect that we will soon come to know that Biden has been enrolled in assisted living.

If that’s the case, then I feel for the Bidens. They have been through lifetimes of trouble and tragedy. But I also feel for poor Hunter Biden. He may be a nakedly repellent figure, but we should/could read this episode as an attempt at atonement. What do you do when you can’t apologize, when you cannot acknowledge the suffering you’ve caused? Hunter Biden is clearly culpable and caught in the loop of his blindness and narcissism.

But there is something touching about his defense of Joe, even if it comes at the expense of others. The inner circle of the Biden administration has a lot to answer for, including levels of concealment that rise to malfeasance. Did they push Ambien on Joe just before the debate? Probably not. But it is touching to see Hunter rise to the defense, trying to square things with the father whose life he complicated. If you cannot come forward in sorrow and humility, then take a swipe at the people who may have done your dad wrong.

There is desperation here and plenty of delusion, but atonement is a peculiar phenomenon. What looks like stupidity may be something else: a prodigal son trying to express shame for his behavior and protect the father he has grievously wronged.