By Charles C. W. Cooke
Monday,
February 12, 2024
There is
an element of Scooby-Dooism to the Democrats’ erroneous conviction that, if
they just insist vehemently enough that Joe Biden is not, in fact, clearly too
old to be president of these United States, they will be able to persuade the
public that it is true. “We would have got away with it,” Biden’s apologists
seem to be muttering aloud, “if it hadn’t been for that pesky Robert Hur!”
Which,
of course, is quite inordinately silly. There is no chance that the Democrats
will be able to get around Joe Biden’s obvious decline, given that the people
to whom they are talking are privy to the same information as they are. At this
point, the observation that Joe Biden is for all intents and purposes defunct
is not an opinion so much as a self-evident fact. Were Biden to seek a job in
the private sector, he would be rejected. Were he to apply for a driver’s
license, he would be denied. Human beings know full well what decline looks
like, and they can see it in their president. The man is decrepit, enfeebled,
unsound. To pretend otherwise in the year 2024 is all-but to out oneself as a
hireling. That ship, I’m afraid, has been sunk.
“An
overwhelming majority of Americans,” ABC News noted yesterday “think President Joe Biden is too
old to serve another term.” And an “overwhelming majority” it is: 86
percent of respondents — including 73 percent of Democrats.
When, I wonder, was the last time we saw a number like that connected with a
political question? Social Security, the “third rail” of American politics, has
an approval rating of 76 percent. Medicare’s favorability is at 68. 86 percent
is the sort of number you get when you ask if the sky is blue or if cars have
wheels or if water is important to sustaining life. One would struggle to find
86 percent support for pepperoni pizza at the We Love Pepperoni Pizza
convention. That Biden has hit that level already is, if I may borrow a colorful phrase, a “Big f***ing deal.”
Do
the Democrats comprehend this? Apparently, they do not. At Politico,
Jonathan Lemire proposes that “Democrats want to see Biden engage with
the press and voters in the off-script and punchy exchanges he’s been known for
in the past, which they believe will help chip away at concerns about the
president’s mental acuity.” But there are two fatal flaws to this exceedingly
cunning plan.
The
first flaw lies in the claim that, if he wished to, Joe Biden would be capable
of delivering “off-script and punchy exchanges” in a way that would “chip away”
at the public’s “concerns.” Lemire notes that Biden has been “known for” such
conduct “in the past.” This is true. And yet the key words there are “in the
past.” Biden used to be capable of extemporaneous
belligerence. Now, however, he is not. If he tries this, he will fail, and, in
failing, he will make his situation considerably worse.
The
second flaw lies in Lemire’s peculiar assumption that, if Biden did behave
in this manner, a sizeable portion of the voting public would thrill to it. As
an alternative to Donald Trump, Joe Biden is palatable. As an offering per se,
he is not. There is nobody in America who is yearning to watch a “punchy” Joe
Biden press conference, and, in all the annals of American history, there never
has been. For decades, Biden has been a bad joke — a Prince Philip without the
charm or extenuating circumstances. To “let Biden be Biden” has never been a
solid plan, and it’s not now, either. It was no accident that, during his last
election campaign, Biden stayed almost completely out of view.
The
other avenues of defense seem equally disastrous. Shortly after the release of
Robert Hur’s report, the White House insisted that Biden’s “diminished faculties and faulty
memory” were the product of his having been exhausted by the fallout of the
October 7 attacks on Israel. But what, exactly, are voters supposed to take
from that? The presidency is a hectic job, and the world is invariably chaotic.
Are we to conclude that, from this moment on, those two things are set to
change? Per Robert Hur, Biden appeared to be a “well-meaning elderly man with a
poor memory,” who could not “remember when he was vice president,” nor “even
within several years, when his son Beau died,” and whose “memory appeared hazy”
when discussing the war in Afghanistan. To which the counterargument is what?
That if nothing important happens in the world before January 20, 2029, the
president of the United States will remain capable of recalling basic details
about his life? That’s not much of a bumper sticker, is it?
Asked
whether she would rather be beautiful or smart, Donald Trump’s ridiculous
lawyer, Alina Habba, explained recently
that she’d prefer to be beautiful if given the choice, because she expected to
be able to “fake being smart.” As it turned out, Habba was wrong: She could not
fake being smart, because the people who were expected to buy her act also got
a vote on the question. Joe Biden and his team have the same problem in a
different form: President Biden cannot fake being competent because the people
who are ultimately empowered to judge his competence have no great obligation
to pretend that they cannot see the truth. It is obvious why the Democratic
Party would urge the public to close its eyes, and it is obvious, too, why the
institutional progressive movement and the mainstream media would consent to go
along. But for most people, the question is straightforward and unencumbered:
“Is Joe Biden too old to be president?” The answer, naturally, is “Yes.”
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