It is a poor worker who blames his tools, though apparently that wisdom hasn’t reached the Oval Office. That’s where widdle Joey Biden is crying about his predicament and blaming the help. 

He believes his aides are failing him and it’s their fault he’s as popular as poison ivy. NBC News says he’s upset the slugs can’t dream up a winning message for Democrats this fall and are undercutting his image of being a straight-shooter by cleaning up things he says. 

The blame game is pathetic, but the last item is especially a howler, given Biden’s long career as a fabulist. His Friday claim to Naval Academy grads that he was “appointed” to the Academy out of high school is the latest example of how he makes things up that are provably false. 

For the big picture, NBC offers a compelling portrait of the internal disaster it calls a “White House adrift.”

“Sinking” would have been more appropriate, but why quibble with the first major article from a leftist media outlet that doesn’t blame everything on Donald Trump or Republicans. It is shameful that it took 17 months of Biden’s misbegotten presidency for anyone in Big Media to detail a failing administration but NBC does a good job of laying out the turmoil that used to get wide coverage in Washington. 

With Trump in the White House, every day was a turkey shoot and the race was on to see who could get the scoop that would bring him down. That we’re finally seeing Biden getting grilled could signal the dam is breaking and he can no longer depend on the media to protect him from ugly facts and unhappy ­voters.

Not that the public was fooled by media complicity. Polls consistently show Biden’s approval numbers hovering at or below a dismal 40% since last summer, so there was no hiding the smell of rot.

Yet now we know, according to NBC, that Biden is alternately frustrated, annoyed, rattled and unhappy. The network says he is “mystified” over the poll numbers and quotes an unnamed source who says, “He’s now lower than Trump, and he’s really twisted about it.”

The overarching theme is that the president feels himself to be a victim of circumstances, friends and opponents. He believes he doesn’t get enough credit for what he views as accomplishments, Republicans don’t get enough blame for his failures and fellow Democrats don’t go on television enough to defend him. 

He sounds like a lonely man. And a very confused one. 

Biden’s no Washington rookie and you would think that somewhere in his nearly 50 years in government he would have realized that no president has succeeded by whining and feeling sorry for himself. If you want a pity party, stay out of politics.

You’d also think he would have realized the president’s fate rises and falls with the country as a whole. In fact, one of the striking features of Biden’s chaotic term is how he seems surprised by long-established rules of power. 

Inflation is raging at gas stations and supermarkets, meaning real wages are falling, but Biden has no answer other than to blame Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. He was shocked at the shortage of baby formula, and his first response was telling: that only a mind reader could see it coming. 

See, don’t blame me.

He’s opened the southern border and the flow of illegal crossers has turned into a river, but it’s not his fault.

That he thinks his answers are satisfying, and that the public should not hold him responsible for the nation’s problems, is perhaps the biggest shock of all. 

To say he’s no Harry Truman is an understatement. With Biden there, the buck never stops at the Oval Office.

One of the consistent earmarks of a successful president is the ability to make the country feel good about itself. Biden doesn’t even try. Instead, he has talked America down repeatedly by harping on “systemic racism” while presiding over widespread surges in crime and breakdowns in civic order. 

The vast majority of people believe the country is on the wrong track, yet he’s mystified by his poll numbers. It turns out there’s an incoherence not just to what he says but also to his grasp of reality.

Taking office, Biden had one good idea — be a uniter. It lasted as long as his inaugural speech, but he is now surprised Republicans won’t give him what he wants in Congress.

Even that reaction is curious because his biggest problem is that he can’t get all 50 Senate Dems to support his most sweeping pieces of legislation. Why should Republicans give him a win if his own party won’t?

Biden’s whining about the staff cleaning up his mistakes is also bizarre. As I wrote Sunday, his loose talk about “militarily” defending Taiwan and wanting regime change in Russia raises the specter that we could be stumbling into World War III. 

Instead of complaining, he should be grateful the staff is smart enough to set the record straight about what is and what isn’t American policy, lest our allies and adversaries be left guessing. 

NBC predicts a staff rush to the exits, with chief of staff Ron Klain among those likely to leave. Klain has been integral to most of Biden’s career, but given the circumstances, a shake-up is inevitable and everybody is expendable.

Still, this presidency won’t be fixed by a staff shuffle. The real problem is that Biden gets to stay

Media’s deadly politics

The Associated Press is playing politics again. In a roundup of mass shootings following the school horror in Uvalde, Texas, it notes that “Chicago recorded 32 gunfire incidents over the weekend in which 47 people were shot and nine died.”

But it quickly pivots to say GOP criticism of murder in Chicago and other cities “is misleading” because “Many guns used … were initially bought in other states” and because Chicago “has fewer murders per capita than many other smaller US cities.”

There you have it — some murders count more than others. At least to the AP.

Rx for teens: military stints 

Reader Pat Torrance offers an idea about what young Americans need. He writes that it should be mandatory “for boys and girls at age 18 to serve 2 years in the military service of their choice. Your new ‘daddy’ (if you didn’t have one growing up) is your new Drill Sergeant. 

“My brothers went in as boys and came out as men! If you love your guns, you will find lots of them in the service. If mental issues arrive, the military is better equipped to handle them.”

‘Frank’ & bans

David Rabinovitz has an observation: “Have you ever noticed that the people who say we need to have frank conversations are the same people who try to cancel you if you disagree with them?”