#Biden’s downhill presidency and other commentary

From the right: Biden’s Downhill Presidency

At The Wall Street Journal, Gerard Baker wonders if President Biden “peaked on Inauguration Day” — as the old joke says the Chicago Cubs did every Opening Day. Biden’s “promise to bring healing to a fractured nation didn’t last the short ride back down Pennsylvania Avenue on Jan. 20.” Now, the “sudden change” in mask advice from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has “undermined” his claims to govern “at all times by data and facts.” The Gaza-Israel conflict was “another unwelcome intrusion of reality into the wonder world of Democratic progressivism.” And a week’s worth of official economic data — revealing a “slowdown in job growth, uptick in unemployment and [the] biggest leap in retail prices in more than a decade” — directly “challenged” Team Biden’s “entire governing premise.”

Culture critic: Identity Politics for Kids

“When it comes to consciousness raising, you can never start too early,” snarks Melanie McDonagh at Spectator USA. Ibram X. Kendi’s “Antiracist Baby,” a “board book for infants,” tells tykes to “open your eyes to all skin colors” because claiming to be colorblind closes them “to what’s right in front of you.” Vice President Kamala Harris’ “The Truths We Hold: Young Readers’ Edition” is another new book pushing “identity politics in the kindergarten.” These works are part of a larger trend “whereby children’s books are now overtly or subliminally designed to inculcate a set of approved values,” including on “race and sexuality.” Sadly, this “reductionist take” on kidlit won’t “make children more likely to devour books” and develop a lifelong love of reading.

Economy watch: When States Nix Federal Funds

It’s “rare” for a state to turn down federal money, especially to improve its own economy — yet several states are doing just that, observe the Washington Examiner’s editors. “The Biden administration’s foolish decision to extend increased unemployment benefits through the summer is clearly retarding the job market’s recovery.” For many workers, “the increased benefit makes it at least as profitable not to work as it is to work. And how can you blame anyone for not working if it actually costs them money?” Which is why states are now “taking matters into their own hands and cutting off expanded benefits, even though that means giving up federal money.” And when their job markets recover rapidly, Biden “will be in a difficult place explaining why.”

Foreign desk: Kushner Looks Wiser Than Ever

The Trump years had “no greater laughingstock in the American foreign-policy cognoscenti than Jared Kushner,” recalls Shany Mor at Newsweek. Yet just four months after the establishment took over, the situation in Israel and the Palestinian territories took “a dramatic turn for the worst.” Kushner-era policies didn’t “lead to an ‘explosion,’ ” as the experts predicted time and again, but “the return of the experts . . . led to disaster.” Above all, Team Biden’s push for Palestinian elections — which were scheduled, then inevitably canceled, lest Hamas won — “promised to invite a violent provocation from Hamas to assert its primacy in Palestinian politics.” We saw “that violence unfold” over the past two weeks.

Science beat: About Those ‘UFOs’ . . .

Ambiguous infrared videos have stirred up concern that “UFOs may pose a serious threat to national security,” but “the videos disclosed so far all have obvious potential terrestrial explanations,” notes Andrew Follett at National Review. One is “almost certainly a seabird or balloon distorted” by the camera’s parallax effect. Another seems to show “a passenger plane from a distance.” The last is easily explained by “a meteor breaking up, or pieces of space junk burning up, in Earth’s atmosphere.” All these may have eventually been identified, but by letting the media frenzy play out, the military can “divert attention from classified projects or accidents.” While the “human fascination with UFOs” hasn’t changed, neither has “the weakness of the evidence that the unidentified objects are anything more alien than geese.”

— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board