By Rich
Lowry
Thursday,
July 13, 2023
Mika
Brzezinski, co-host of Morning Joe, is very cross with the White
House staff.
It
isn’t, she believes, doing a good-enough job protecting Joe Biden from the
effects of being 80 years old and increasingly frail.
She
insists that it needs “to clear a pathway” whenever he is walking somewhere,
and make sure it is “there and telling him what’s next” when he’s at an event
and going from Point A to Point B:
It’s not
clear what presidency Brzezinski has been watching, because it’s not as though
the White House staff is working Biden like a dog, or as though there isn’t
plenty of pointing and directing whenever Biden is out in public.
Obviously,
the problem isn’t staff inattention but the difficult balance involved in
maintaining the image of Biden as a robust, fully in-control president of the
United States while giving him the help he needs as someone who is visibly
shaky on his feet and unsure of what to do with himself at public events.
This is
a balance that, in all likelihood, will fail at some point, with potentially
disastrous consequences for all involved.
To her
credit, Brzezinski isn’t denying Biden’s infirmities, as many Democrats do, so
much as shifting the blame for them.
The
latest discussion of Biden’s age was occasioned by his use of King Charles as a
bit of a crutch during a visit the other day, while the king had some
difficulty negotiating Biden where he needed to go during an inspection of the
Welsh Guards.
In the
scheme of things, this wasn’t a big event, but it’s part of a pattern and one
that suggests more trouble ahead — the minor stumbles and wobbles will
inevitably get worse, since aging is a progressive condition.
Even if
the White House staff were to dispatch the advance team to remove every pebble
in Biden’s path, as Brzezinski suggests, there is simply no way to protect an
80-year-old man from every potential misstep.
In the
end, there is a reliable way to keep him upright, which is a walker. Let’s say
he doesn’t need one now. Can we be sure he wouldn’t need one a year from now?
And would the White House ever want to give him one, given that he’s in the
most demanding office in the world and a walker is a symbol of decrepitude
associated with assisted-living facilities?
No, of
course not. Every incentive is to keep trotting Biden out as though nothing is
wrong — 80 is the new 70 — and hope for the best. Maybe he shuffles through the
raindrops and nothing bad happens between now and November 2024. But there is
some significant chance that it does, that there is a fateful sandbag, wire, or
step out there that is going to bring home the fragility of the leader of the
free world in a disturbing and undeniable way.
Democrats
who look past this possibility — or, like Brzezinski, think it can be avoided
with better staff work — are running the risk of repeating the Ruth Bader
Ginsburg experience of talking themselves into believing everything is fine,
until it’s not, and they are left dealing with an avoidable catastrophe.
Again,
maybe Biden gets lucky, but it’s entirely conceivable that some terrible fall
will come in October 2024 and throw the election to his Republican opponent, quite
possibly Donald J. Trump.
If it does, Democrats will have no one — not even the White House staff — to blame but themselves.
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