The Biden Debate Debacle

National Review Online

Friday, June 28, 2024

 

Democrats cannot say they weren’t warned. Joe Biden’s age has never been a secret. He shows it every time he appears in public. We warned them ourselves. Back in February, we wrote that Biden should have withdrawn from the race last year — and still owed it to the country to do so. That reality ought to be clear even to his admirers after a debate in which his chief opponent was not Donald Trump but his own frailty.

 

Biden sounded weak, wheezy, decrepit, and overwhelmed. His best moments came when he got indignant, but even then, his mantra of “the idea!” got almost as old as he sounded.

 

It was an unspinnably bad performance. The people who claim that Biden is consistently sharp and vigorous behind the scenes always strained credulity. They should now be ignored or mocked.

 

If Biden’s performance had not been so halting and weak, Trump’s own ramblings and flights from reality — on tariffs, on January 6, on deficit spending — might have cost him. But Trump was himself more disciplined than he had been during the 2020 debates, making relatively focused defenses of his record and attacks on Biden’s. He drew blood from Biden on late-term abortion and on Afghanistan.

 

Biden’s senescence wasn’t the only dismaying thing about the debate. Neither candidate explained what he intends to do with power the next four years. Both were lost at sea when confronted with questions about the nation’s finances. They were livelier comparing golf handicaps. Bad as all of that is, though, the immediate problem is that we have a president who does not appear to be up to the job today, let alone for the next four and a half years.

 

Democrats can scarcely hide their sense of panic and dread. They have only themselves to blame.