3 Times Joe Biden Ignored His Advisers — And Disaster Followed

Months before Democrats cast their first 2020 primary ballot, Joe Biden began highlighting what he believed to be his best selling point: his superior decision-making. “I think my record has been good,” candidate Biden told NPR in September 2019. Even then, his campaign had to deal with Biden’s tendency to let his mind wander or lose his place while speaking, but he insisted that his verbal miscues had “nothing to do with judgment” — specifically “whether or not you send troops to war, the judgment of whether you bring someone home.” His campaign argued that his five decades in public service had uniquely equipped him to become, in the words of George W. Bush, “the decider.”

Since taking office, Biden has shown notable independence by breaking with the consensus served up to him by a coterie of Obama-era analysts, advisers, and administrators. Unfortunately, most of the times this has happened, the result has been a policy failure for him and, more importantly, a major setback for our country. Here are three such examples.