But being the right candidate to beat Trump did not make Biden the right candidate to actually become president. If this wasn’t already clear, it is now. The hopes and dreams of a Biden presidency that would remake America are beginning to crumble. Talks of being the next FDR now seem naive and hubristic. Indeed, my warnings about aspiring to be LBJ suddenly look eerily prophetic (be careful what you wish for). Trump’s evil insanity made many people cling to the hope that Biden would be some “Jesus meets JFK” savior, as opposed to a predictable rebound relationship.

I took a lot of grief for saying I couldn’t vote for either man in 2020, but what is happening in Afghanistan right now demonstrates why the judgment of both men disqualified them. Biden has been laughably wrong on every major foreign policy decision for decades, so why would we expect him to get this right? When you consider his many previous gaffes (“you cannot go to a 7-Eleven or a Dunkin’ Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent”) and mistakes (“Stand up, Chuck!”), Biden was a more innocuous Trump before Trump one-upped him. What is happening now is what we should’ve expected. Just as the Taliban are doing Taliban things, this is Biden being Biden. It’s what we might have expected had Trump not burned out all of our outrage receptors and shifted the window of acceptable behavior.