Normally, when a U.S. president visits a foreign country, he says nice things about the nation he's visiting. He speaks of an enduring alliance, or the greatness of his host nation's arts, or salutes its impressive sports teams, or compliments its beautiful scenery. It's all pleasant stuff, and perfectly appropriate for a visiting head of any state. 

Then there's Joe Biden, who's taken that custom to an entirely nauseating level, traveling in Ireland on a non-strategically important visit with his corrupt, dissolute son Hunter at his side, taking in the sites, visiting even the religious sites as a "devout Catholic," and emitting a glurgy effusiveness so abnormal about the country it raised questions about his fitness for the U.S. presidency, even to the Washington Post.

In a piece headlined: "Biden, the American president, seems awfully at home in Ireland," the Post reported:

DUBLIN — President Biden stood in a lavishly decorated room at the Irish president’s residence on Thursday, declaring just how comfortable he feels during this visit to his ancestral homeland.

“I’m not going home,” the American president said. “I’m staying here because — isn’t this an incredible place?”

He looked out and addressed “all you American reporters” as he remarked on how much the Irish president’s home looks like the White House, suggesting he might as well stay in the Irish version.

 

That sentiment pervaded a day of ceremony here as Biden met with Irish political leaders, addressed the Irish Parliament and engaged in Irish sport (which turned out to carry more risks than his speeches, as a ball whizzed by his left shoulder and nearly struck him).

An Irish reporter asked for a selfie (which he granted). He rang a bell three times — the first, he said, “for Ireland” and the second for “all my Irish ancestors." And the third? “For peace.”

Biden may have been born in Scranton, Pa., have spent a half-century in Washington and own two houses in Delaware, but this week, Ireland sounded like his true native land.

“It feels wonderful. Feels like home,” he said on Wednesday afternoon.

“It feels like home,” he said in the evening.

“When you’re here, you wonder why anyone would ever want to leave,” he added. “No, I mean it.”

It was a notable message for the president of the United States, whose job description includes repeatedly extolling it as the greatest country in the world, as he wondered aloud at times why his ancestors ever left.

There also was this:

Then he turned to the lawmakers and said, “If you forgive the poor attempt at Irish: Tá mé sa bhaile. I’m at home. I’m at home. I only wish I could stay longer.”

Had enough? It goes on and on with examples, suggesting that this clown really would rather be in Ireland, living an easy life marveling at pretty things than serving as the chief executive of the United States of America.

Not even Biden's lefty USAID chief, Samatha Power, who is actually from Ireland, has been caught doing that. She knows which side her bread is buttered on.

But not Wistful Joe. In a way, his statements were understandable. He actually does have at least some Irish ancestry. That compares and constrasts sharply with all the nationalities he claims to have kinship to, from Poland to Puerto Rico to Africa. He is constantly caught pretending and playing Walter Mitty, claiming to be someone he's not. It must have been a nice change of pace for him to not have to pretend. 

But while the Post clearly looked in askance at Biden's overly effusive statements about a pleasant, friendly, but usually unimportant minor country to U.S. global interests, there wasn't much stated analysis about what all that glurge from Biden might have meant, though I suspect I know what they were thinking.

Biden gushed and gushed through Ireland, not just complimenting the place, which would have been fine, but outright declaring he'd rather be in that place than the United States of America serving as its leader.

There's something 'off' about that. If he'd rather be there, what exactly is stopping him? Ireland has long served as a safe haven for retired corrupt Democrats, such as former Connecticut Sen. Christopher Dodd, a longtime Kennedy buddy who built himself a mansion there in a fashionable celebrity haunt there after he retired from the Senate in 2010 with a lot of money he somehow had gotten hold of shortly after leaving office. Dodd's foot-out-the-door followed the bank meltdown of the early Obama years while he served as chairman of the Senate banking committee. Biden, having a banking crisis of his own to avoid responsibility for, could do the same thing if he wanted, particularly with his term coming to an end in less than two years' time.

Biden's overly effusive statements come at a time when speculation is hot about whether he will run for election as president again. He's 80 years old, walks with a halting gait, displays significant memory loss, and often doesn't know where he is, who he's talking to, or where he's going. Might he be fantasizing about what he'd really like to be doing, which is retiring on a permanent vacation? 

What else can one conclude from a trip like this, where he made a big show of his longing for the blarney isle and not wanting to be in the U.S., having made one hash after another in his miserable term as president? It raises the question of whether he really wants to be president again when he ought to be relaxing at the dog tracks, and if not, who is pushing him to run for office again. Perhaps it's Biden himself, being too addicted to power, no matter how inadequate he is as president, unable to admit the truth to himself. But with so much evidence out there that he's somebody's puppet, it could be that he's being pushed into running and all he can do is run his mouth about wanting to be in Ireland instead. He doesn't have much self-control in his dotage, so what we are hearing might just be the real Joe Biden.

Image: Screen shot from The Independent video, via YouTube.