Joe Biden Has No Swagger

By Rich Lowry

Sunday, June 16, 2024

 

Joe Biden tried to tell off a journalist the other day.

 

In response to a shouted question about whether he would serve all four years if reelected or hand over the reins to Kamala Harris, Biden asked the reporter if he was okay, or if he’d fallen “on his head or something.”

It was a fairly characteristic Biden insult but didn’t quite come off, in part because at first you weren’t sure if Biden was attempting a put-down or simply confused.

 

Biden has always been a blowhard and a bit of a joke, yet there was a time when his forcefulness and self-assurance made him, if not exactly formidable, someone who couldn’t be entirely dismissed.

 

He won the vice-presidential debate in 2012 by running over Paul Ryan — flashing big, insincere smiles as he condescended to his younger adversary and interrupted him with abandon.

 

The Biden who was capable of such an unedifying but effective display of dominance is long gone.

 

Whatever swagger Biden once had has been lost in mumbly incoherence, blank looks, and stiff walks across the White House grounds.

 

Not that Biden has gotten the memo. When in the recent Time magazine interview the reporter asked Biden if he could still do the job at age 85, the president responded belligerently, saying that he can do the job better “than anybody you know.” He then added, “You’re looking at me, I can take you, too,” which was either a claim that he can do the job of president better than Massimo Calabresi of Time magazine or, perhaps, a challenge to a fight.

 

Then, at a White House event for influencers, Biden got angry at a TikToker who asked him about the “genocide” in Gaza, threatening to throw his phone — really far. “I have a good arm, man,” the president of the United States averred. “I can throw a long way.”

 

The exchanges were a little reminiscent of Biden getting confronted by a voter at an Iowa town hall four years ago about his age and Hunter’s business dealings. The candidate referred to his interlocutor as “man,” “jack,” and “fat” and challenged him, alternatively, to a push-up contest, a race, or an IQ test.

 

Biden was more spry in 2019, but the idea of him publicly doing push-ups even back then was preposterous, and it’s even more absurd that he thinks he might now be able to beat up a Time magazine reporter or throw a mobile phone a great distance, when he can barely walk across the White House lawn.

 

It’s like the spirited old codger at the assisted living facility who tells you, over a serving of Jell-O with whipped cream, that he can beat you at arm wrestling because he could do it 30 years ago. It’s a kind of endearing trait — although not in the leader of the free world.

 

Biden thinks he still has, but desperately lacks, anything close to the quality of being the biggest person in the room, of having some swagger that we associate with presidents of the United States.

 

This is what Eddie Murphy was getting at when he said of the King, “When Elvis walked into a room, Elvis Presley was in the f***ing room.”

 

Ronald Reagan had movie-star looks and plenty of presence.

 

Although he was much diminished by events near the end of his presidency, George W. Bush had a Texas self-assurance.

 

Barack Obama was stylish and young, and thought he was the smartest guy in the room — with less reason than he believed, but there was no doubt he was sharp.

 

Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, and George H. W. Bush had no swagger. Yet they were all considerably more vigorous than Biden, who is gaunt and pale and often seemingly in danger of tipping over and in need of guidance whenever he’s expected to get from Point A to Point B.

 

His entire bearing and way of interacting with the world is flagrantly unpresidential, and everyone knows it, even if his most committed defenders publicly insist that all is well.

 

The legendary Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee once dismissed a job applicant because “nothing clanks when he walks.” Biden’s clanking days are far behind him. All that remains now is a quiet shuffle that the president may think of as the footsteps of a colossus bestriding the earth, ready to kick the ass of anyone who crosses him, but is, along with everything else, convincing a supermajority of Americans he can’t do this job for another four years.