Joe Biden’s biggest political success may have been convincing voters of his claimed affability. In reality, Biden’s thin skin and grudge-holding capacity has been on display for decades — as has his pettiness. On more than one occasion on campaign trails, Biden has threatened fisticuffs and/or screeched about his superior intellect when people contradict him in public, a character trait that the media conveniently overlooked in both 2008 and in 2020.

Yesterday, this trait popped up again, only this time it demonstrated the depth of Biden’s pettiness more than his temper. Apparently still stinging from sharing a stage with Sarah Palin twelve years ago — and years after Palin ceased being a political force — Biden made her the butt of a very strange joke yesterday.

And true to his oh-so-superior intellect, he flubbed it:

President Biden says that during the Obama administration he worked with almost every governor, except for one who "can see Alaska from her porch."

(That would be former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin…but it was Tina Fey on SNL and not Palin who said 'I can see Russia from my house')

— Meridith McGraw (@meridithmcgraw) November 15, 2021

Not only did Palin never actually claim to see “Russia from my house,” Biden didn’t even get that much right. At the risk of overemphasizing an ackshualllly response, but Palin lived in Alaska. I’m pretty sure Palin could see Alaska from her porch any time she peeked out the front window … the back window … or any of the windows.

How incompetent do you have to be to screw that up, especially since it’s clear that Biden had tried to prepare the remark in advance? But more than that, imagine the pettiness of attacking Palin at this point in time. What relevance does Palin have to this administration, or to the political moment in general? Imagine this much bitterness and incompetence rolled up into one person. He put more work into making Palin the butt of his “joke” than he apparently has in getting Americans he abandoned out of Afghanistan.

It’s bad enough that every third word out of Biden’s mouth when he faces criticism is “Trump.” At this point, when do we start seeing Biden flub jokes about George H. W. Bush and Dan Quayle? Better yet, when do we start seeing Biden take responsibility for his failures? Because while Palin never did claim to see Russia from her house, the rest of us can see the Jimmy Carter era arising again in the White House.