Presidents can be reassuring national grandfathers at times. Ronald Reagan comes to mind. Dwight Eisenhower before him. Joe Biden is by far the oldest president in U.S. history; he turns 79 in less than three weeks.

But there’s no kindly grandpa image emerging with Joe Biden now. It’s a disturbing portrait of an aged man under the control of either a fading mind or a cadre of unidentified and unelected but malevolent, Deep State actors behind the scenes.

Or both.

On issue after issue, Biden quite consistently takes actions that damage the nation’s energy, economy, currency, foreign relations, and the U.S. image abroad. The list grows by the week. And never any apologies.

Honest differences on various policies aside, Biden’s actions in these first 284 of his 1,461-day term consistently and clearly run against the obvious best interests of the people and country that elected him. Or more accurately, of the people and country that unelected his predecessor.

The latest outrage came last week, when word leaked that the Biden administration was negotiating with illegal aliens who had been separated from family in the border chaos created by the administration’s open invitation to migrate.

The current reported plan is to reward people who entered the country illegally by presenting them with $450,000 per person, in some cases in excess of a million dollars, for a single family that had no legal business being here in the first place.

These are the folks being quietly infiltrated in buses and planes by the government to dozens of cities and states far from the southern border, and released on an honor system to show up for later immigration appointments. Good luck ever tracking them down.

True, given later marriages and fewer babies, America will someday need immigrants to man its future economy. But how, in effect, erasing the nation’s border to admit hundreds of thousands of un-vetted people benefits that nation now is inexplicable. All in but 10 months.

The only conceivable reason – and it’s a corrupt one – is to create a vast sector of the population that owes its existence here and surely, future political allegiance, to the party that permitted and aided its illegal infiltration. And then set them up with a financial nest-egg of nearly a half-million dollars each.

That sum, by the way, is $100,000 more than the government gives the family of a slain American soldier for its loss.

Such unrequired largesse seems politically insane and self-destructive, coming a year before Democrats face what already appear to be devastating midterm election prospects. As our sister site, Townhall.com, noted:

The potential for illegal immigrant families to receive hundreds of thousands of dollars from the federal government while Americans continue to struggle under the Biden administration’s inflationary economic policy is not a great look ahead of the 2022 midterms.

Like so many “mistakes,” the Biden crowd has offered no explanations, leaving corrosive suspicions to fester.

Inflation also looms, now running at more than five percent year-over-year. To get through a messy news cycle months ago, Biden falsely assured everyone inflation was merely a short-term economic blip.

But, Biden and a progressive Democrat Congress, desperate to utilize its slim ideological control while it can, continues its immense spending splurge, which will drive inflation higher.

No president and party genuinely concerned for the good of a nation would place such persistent priority on ideological gains that lead to destructive economic ends — touching virtually every American in some way.

On Day One in office, Joe Biden killed the Keystone XL pipeline, a main strut of the country’s carefully constructed energy independence, along with 40,000 jobs of union members who’ve been key Democrat Party supporters.

Later, Biden lifted sanctions and endorsed, for no obvious reason, Russia’s new gas pipeline to Europe, which helps the economy and regime of a president he’s labeled as “a killer,” hurts U.S. LNG sales to Europe, and weakens the NATO alliance.

Biden has canceled oil and gas drilling leases and placed vast areas out of bounds for energy development. In less than 10 months, he has erased that energy independence and damaged production such that he was forced to beg OPEC countries to boost production and lower global oil prices.

Predictably, they rejected America’s plea. Uncertainty over future production has pushed gas and winter heating oil prices to uncomfortable levels. Gasoline prices today are 55 percent higher than a year ago.

In the 40 weeks since Joe Biden entered the White House, the national average gallon price of gas has jumped 41 percent, from $2.46 then to $3.47 now, with the largest weekly increase of nine cents coming in Biden’s home state of Delaware. With oil prices holding well above $82 a barrel, there are no signs of easing.

Adding to price pressures is a drop in available gasoline stocks of two million barrels to 215 million.

Biden began his tenure with majority job approval and Donald Trump’s COVID vaccines, which became the Democrat’s strong suit and basis for national optimism about finally exiting the pandemic.

But his authoritarian over-reaction to million resisting the vaccine did not boost vaccination rates but did alienate many, reflected in a precipitous decline in his job approval ratings across the board beginning in early August just before the avoidable Afghan debacle..

Even today’s college students, who need safe spaces, would know that you cannot have a massive evacuation of civilians from a war zone without troops on the ground. Yet, in defiance of advice from military leaders, Biden ordered the last 2,500 U.S. personnel out of Afghanistan, leaving thousands of Americans and Afghan allies behind at the Taliban’s mercy.

He had to send twice that many troops back in to cover only a partial evacuation, promised to get all Americans out, broke that promise, and abandoned $85 billion of sophisticated and often secret military gear to the enemy we’d fought for two decades. Now, they can sell or give it to Chinese and Russian interests to help develop countermeasures.

At this writing, hundreds of Americans and thousands of Afghan allies remain stranded in-country.

Last week Biden also announced an end to bail for people accused of violent crimes like murder, rape, and deadly assault. His boasts professed belief that setting them free during lengthy legal proceedings was necessary for equity because other people remained free. With violent crime rates already surging, that sounded specious.

There are other examples of self-destructive decisions by this man and the people propping him up. And you will surely spot more in coming weeks.

We can only speculate now on the reasons for this perverse behavior. That shouldn’t prove difficult. But you get the point that, counterintuitively, the best interests of the country that Joe Biden swore an oath to defend are not among this man’s main concerns.