Well, that’s what it’s like watching the oblivious Joe Biden and his cast of amateur political actors always trying to sell us on blaming someone else for his ongoing array of mistakes and ineptitudes. The extraordinarily painful gas prices, for example, are clearly Vladimir Putin’s fault. Don’t laugh.

Except Biden et al. are adults. We expect them to act like real adults. But they can’t. Because they aren’t. They’re play-acting way beyond their skill, just like kids in that school play.

And they’re frightened for their jobs, as they should be given the nation’s rising anger as measured by the boss’ declining job approval, now floating into the 30s below even the awful ogre they replaced with such disdain and arrogance.

The incompetence begins with what’s-her-name, the new press secretary who got the lead stage role for reasons having nothing to do with communications skills. She’s unable to remember her public lines even when the script is right in front of her.

Here’s a sample Karine Jean-Pierre quote with a suspiciously Freudian slip:

The president has been very clear in making sure that he does everything that he can to elevate—to alleviate the pain that American families are feeling when it comes to gas prices.

You would feel sad for these lost souls were their incompetence, dishonesties, and Woke regimen not guiding our helplessly frightened nation into a recession that will cripple the dreams and lives of millions.

The victims will include many who so righteously and eagerly voted against Donald Trump while remaining wantonly blind to the glaring mental, moral, and physical deficiencies of his aged alternative.

It is difficult to imagine how anyone in just 17 months could so consistently and conscientiously make so many dumb decisions that seriously damage the country he swore to defend — “So help me God” — without intending to do so. The odds against such catastrophic coincidences are beyond even Inspector Clouseau.

Guided by his newly-discovered devotion to a Far Left ideology that detests what America has stood for in virtually all of the preceding 45 presidencies, Joe Biden began his dereliction of duties on Day One launching the systematic destruction of the country’s newfound energy independence.

Now, not being an energy hostage to pretend petroleum princes far away was conceived and assembled by the deplorable Donald Trump. That by itself makes the concept totally unacceptable to the former big-rig driver now occupying the Oval Office.

As always with Joe Biden, his disasters are someone else’s fault, mainly Putin. But it wasn’t Putin who killed the Keystone pipeline, canceled oil leases, and banned drilling in his very first days. That was Biden.

On his first day at work, Joe Biden killed the Keystone XL pipeline with its 40,000 union jobs and the promise of safely transporting 840,000 barrels of oil a day underground to Texas from America’s best friend since the unpleasantries of 1812.

To further cripple energy independence and limit supplies, Biden also canceled oil drilling leases on federal properties and put vast lands and offshore areas firmly off-limits for exploration and drilling. He also raised royalties on oil firms.

Then Biden endorsed the undersea gas pipeline dream of Russia’s Vladimir Putin, which Trump had sanctioned because it would enrich that despot and his business cronies, increase NATO members’ reliance on energy from their main strategic opponent, and damage American LNG exports. A win-win-win for Moscow.

Biden never really explained his thinking on that damaging stupidity. He knew he could count on a sympathetic U.S. media to make no trouble. Biden changed his mind later when his attempted suck-up to Putin failed, as Barack Obama’s suck-up to Putin also failed in 2009.

The ideologues in Biden’s White House have no understanding of markets. And they don’t want one. But the growing fuel shortages predictably pushed prices from $2.24 a gallon in January last year to $3.09 one year ago to $3.34 last December and now about $5.

With lifetime Secret Service protection and SUV chauffeurs, Joe Biden will never buy gasoline again.

But as he must in an election year, the president decries the price surge even as it nears the $7 a gallon target price he set as his campaign goal to kill the fossil-fuel industry and drive fellow Americans to somehow purchase more expensive electric vehicles using gas-powered cars with virtually no trade-in value.

For cosmetic political purposes, Biden is draining a million barrels a day from our Strategic Petroleum Reserve that was designed for real energy emergencies, not midterm election years that look ominous for Democrats. Trump had filled it for the first time at cheap prices.

Without checking with political allies, Biden also proposed suspending the 18-cent federal gas tax for 90 days. That went over like 10 gallons of diesel in an unleaded tank, making the oldest president ever look, well, impotent.

This week, Biden travels to Europe and the Mideast where the man who called the Saudis pariahs and intentionally curbed U.S. oil production will beg them to increase oil production just for us. They will be polite.

The latest price increases, of course, are tied to Putin’s unprovoked February invasion of Ukraine. Last fall Biden declared the Russian had already decided to attack with the invasion forces he began assembling only after Trump left office.

Biden threatened serious sanctions, but he never implemented any until weeks after Russian artillery was systematically destroying Ukraine’s cities and lives.

Sanctions after-the-fact have never worked. (See Iran, Venezuela, North Korea.) Joe Biden claimed that his oil embargo on Russian energy sales would strangle Putin’s war finances. That’s what he said anyway.

By stupidity or intent, here’s how Biden’s oil embargo has actually worked: The threatened loss of Russia as an energy supplier jacked the global price of oil $30 a barrel to $121.

As we reported here the other day, this means that thanks to Biden’s oil embargo, the Russian leader is now actually making billions in additional oil revenues every day selling more oil at a higher price to different customers like China, India, and energy-poor developing nations with no stake in the strategic struggle enveloping Ukraine.

Biden is chronically late for almost everything—meetings, news conferences, policy implementations. Remember, a year ago, he had his Mission Accomplished moment, marking the end of the COVID pandemic just as the Delta variant grew potent.

Trump had negotiated a final Afghan troop withdrawal for April 2021 before the annual fighting season began. Biden delayed that until mid-summer, a peak combat time when the Taliban was capturing one province a day.

The president ordered all U.S. troops out one night, disregarding Pentagon advice to keep some in-country to cover an evacuation of Americans and American allies.

Then, he had to send three times as many troops back in to guard evacuations, promising to stay until everyone who wanted out got out. But he ended that abruptly too, leaving thousands behind. Now, they’re being tracked down and executed thanks to detailed personnel files left behind undestroyed.

The supply-chain crisis displayed another tardy response. He addressed that with a couple of photo ops because, appearances.

And, of course, the baby-formula crisis that began in February, but Biden claims he was unaware until April. How does that “Gee-I-really-didn’t-know-about-it” excuse happen? We’ll never know because our media watchdogs have become media lapdogs.

Then, sadly, there is Joe Biden’s deteriorating mental condition. Shaking hands on-stage with an invisible fan is one thing. Blathering on in a confused rendition of a teleprompter script is another.

But last week’s revelation of his detailed crib notes was genuinely disturbing. Seriously, a career politician needs a reminder to greet guests?

As detailed by our colleague Nick Arama, Biden inadvertently allowed photographers to capture the directions his staff printed for him. Apparently, the commander in chief needs to be told:

“YOU enter the Roosevelt room and say hello to the participants.”

“YOU take YOUR seat.”

RedState cartoonist Jim Thompson also had a take on it in his commentary piece.

Those school plays inevitably conclude with an enthusiastic standing-O from parents and grandparents. And probably an extra curtain call because the children are trying, in a good way.

This administration is trying too, in a sad way.

This week, the Joe Biden Presidential Players take their show abroad for the world to witness American amateurs in action. The reviews could be harsh.