Our Creampuff-in-Chief has done it again. After the disgusting humiliation of Kabul in August, failing to gain concessions from the Iranians on their nuclear program, stirring the fires of inflation, and hopelessly mucking up the war on COVID, Joe Biden has convened a “Summit of Democracies” that includes some outright human rights abusers and excludes several of our closest strategic allies. The Russians and Chinese are openly mocking this effort in liberal chin-dribbling, and it is causing even left-leaning outlets such as the Washington Post to wonder if the Democratic Party has lost the art of governance. As Casey Stengel once asked of the fledgling New York Mets, “Can’t anybody here play this game?”

What Biden expected from this exercise in futility is unknown. He used it to attack Republicans for the January 6 occupation of Congress and their efforts in several states to ensure that only U.S. citizens vote in elections as an assault on democracy in our country. He failed to mention that it is nearly impossible to hear a conservative voice in major U.S. universities because of the risk of being canceled by “woke” activist students and faculty members. As the Biden administration allows thousands of illegal aliens who would likely vote Democratic into the country, he lectures other nations on the virtues of easy voting.

The summit could have been written off as a harmless feel-good exercise had it not done some real harm regarding our strategic position in the world. Hungary and Singapore, two key allies, were excluded largely because both strongly disapprove of LGBT activism. Biden needs all the help he can get in Eastern Europe regarding Russian adventurism in Ukraine, so upsetting Hungary makes no sense. Singapore is a key ally in the U.S. attempt to contain China in the Indo-Pacific. Why Biden allowed the leftist, LBGT clique that currently runs the Department of State to alienate two important strategic assets must either be chalked up to ineptitude on the part of the West Wing staff or the senile incompetence of the president. For years, Foggy Bottom has been known for harboring employees with leftist tendencies and interesting sexual preferences. Government employees have a right to their own sexual private lives and political leanings, but when those interfere with national security, a line has been crossed. We should not be surprised if the Hungarians or Singaporeans invite in Russian and Chinese trade delegations just to make a point.

Even more humiliating for our country is an invitee that declined to participate. Perfidious Pakistan harbored the Taliban and Osama bin Laden. Her despicable intelligence agency worked against our interests in numerous ways, and her fundamentalist mullahs actively persecute Christians in the country. Despite all that, they were invited, along with many other countries whose claim to “democracy” is dubious. The Pakistanis may be bad guys, but they are not fools, and they opted out of this farce. Word has it that they caved to Chinese pressure. In that case, China’s gain is not our loss.

Perhaps the greatest piece of hypocrisy in the whole summit charade is Biden’s call for democracies to wage a war on corruption. It apparently escaped his attention that we just lost a war in Afghanistan where we wasted billions on trying to eliminate corruption. After his son’s capers, Biden lecturing others on eliminating corruption is like Custer holding a seminar on eliminating Indians. (READ MORE: Arrangement in Hunter Green)

All of this brings us back to the question of what the Biden administration hoped to gain with the summit. Most Americans do not even know or care that it happened. The nations that participated likely did so to keep U.S. foreign aid flowing or to humor an increasingly erratic superpower ally. The Russians, Chinese, Iranians, and North Koreans are obviously not shaking in their boots over it.

Putting democracy on a pedestal is dangerous and very difficult to define. Our nation is not a pure popular democracy like Athens was. The founding fathers had studied the classics and knew that the “democratic” Athenian electorate had killed the likes of Socrates and banished Themistocles, their greatest military hero, on a whim. Consequently, the framers of the Constitution developed a set of checks and balances to prevent popular mob rule. Since then, our version of democracy has worked for us, but it does not work for other countries. There will never be a true democratic bloc, and we are foolish to try to create one.

What has the summit accomplished? It could be summed up in a communique reading, “Democracy good, autocracy bad.” In most of such exercises in futility, the participants would congratulate themselves and adjourn to the bar. But this was a virtual summit. Typical of the Biden presidency, the fun has been sucked out of everything.

Gary Anderson lectures on Alternative Analysis at the graduate level.