It’s how the game is played

Joe Biden is so proud of himself he can’t stop bragging. He really shouldn’t be celebrating by any principled assessment. But he seems mildly entitled in the context of the cynically tacky way the contemporary American political contest is played.

What he did was give Republicans a dose of their own medicine. He embellished a kernel — one little piece of corn off a big cob — and parlayed it into a self-serving misrepresentation that smears everyday Republicans with the nonsense of their extremist base.

It’s like Republican tactical references to a tax on death rather than, in truth, a tax on only the largest inheritances from only the super-rich estates. High tax rates on the richest inheritances are how we produce generous late-life donations to charities and get names put on hospital annexes. But it’s so much more politically effective for conservatives to spread the impression that liberals so want your money they won’t even let you die for free.

It’s like Sarah Sanders saying she’s going to save your kids from all this liberal indoctrinating not remotely occurring at the public school. All she really wants is to pay you taxpayer money to switch your kids to a church school.

Lord knows church schools would never even think of doing any indoctrinating.

What Biden did was say in his State of the Union speech that he would stop these Republican efforts to do away with Social Security and Medicare.

These what? Do you mean Republicans are coming for the only money Grandma’s got?

He based that on a statements by, or positions of, a couple of nutty rightwing Republican senators.

Mike Lee of Utah once got wound up and said he’d like to do away with those entitlement programs if he could, which he couldn’t. He’s since “walked it back,” in the modern political vernacular.

U.S. Sen. Rick Scott of Florida put in a spending-reform bill to “sunset,” meaning end, all federal spending programs every five years and force their rejustification for reupping.

Presumably that would include Social Security and Medicare, and thus was a damned fool thing to say. It enabled Biden to make the point that such a “sunset” vow presumably would end Social Security every five years and risk, if not actual elimination, severe restrictions or delayed negotiations while Grandma’s bills piled up.

What he didn’t say was that other Republicans in Congress were irate at Scott for saying such a damned fool thing and that, from the savvy Mitch McConnell to self-interested Donald Trump, they had denounced, derided and denied it.

No one is going to end Social Security or Medicare anytime soon, if ever. At most, most likely, there will be some on-the-margin fixes only when the crisis of actuarial inevitability looms closer.

But Biden’s real trick was extending the bait, which Republicans had no choice but to take. There the Democratic president was, live and in person before them and the nation, leaving the blatant misrepresentation that he would have to stop them on their evil plan to rob Grandma.

A boisterous group anyway, Republicans in the chamber were obliged to rise and shout “no, no” or “lie,” at which point Biden smiled and said that’s good and that he always welcomed conversion.

Reflecting obvious anticipation of that, Biden took a scheduled trip two days later to Florida. He asked seniors and senior-advocacy people if they’d been watching when he called out the Republicans on their plan to end Social Security.

He credited himself with having forced Republicans, right then and there on live national television, to disavow the sinister scheme.

Then he assured everyone that, if the Republicans should turn around as rascals might and try to end Social Security anyway, he’d need to be kept in the White House for control of the veto pen.

He also was hamstringing Republicans in the debt-ceiling debate. If they hold out for spending cuts and threaten debt default, it might appear now that what they really want is to put Social Security and Medicare at risk.

It’s all quite distasteful in its manipulation by misrepresentation. It’s no way for a great country’s governance and political debate to be done. And it’s probably not excuse enough for Democrats to say they’ve done it to us and will again and turnabout is fair play.

Let’s just say turnabout is symmetry. And let us agree that no one is going to end Social Security or Medicare for the foreseeable future, although everyone needs to do what no one is willing, which is work collaboratively on actuarial reforms to make them sound for a longer term.