Joe Biden Was Always Too Old for the Job

National Review Online

Friday, January 03, 2025

 

On August 16, 2021 – in the wake of an aggressive Taliban advance upon Kabul as the United States rushed its withdrawal from our military position in Afghanistan – Joe Biden addressed the nation to explain the sudden drawdown in forces and the chaos then enveloping the region. As he spoke, his slurred words and half-attentive bearing – during an address that any president would otherwise treat as a matter of paramount importance – shocked not only the nation but many of National Review’s writers, who immediately sounded the alarm that Joe Biden, a mere few months into his first term, seemed mentally unfit for the responsibilities of the job.

 

On January 1, 2025 – in the wake of an ISIS-inspired terrorist atrocity in New Orleans – Joe Biden addressed the nation to explain nothing at all, merely to mark his continuing presence amidst a crisis. As he spoke, his slurred words and half-attentive bearing – during an address that any president would otherwise treat as a matter of paramount importance – shocked absolutely nobody whatsoever, the nation (and our mainstream media) having long since accustomed itself to the reality that the president of the United States is mentally unfit for the job and that we are currently being governed by a cadre of his advisers instead.

 

Given the stakes involved, the journey America has traveled in the span of those four years – from the raising of dismissed qualms about President Biden’s mental decline at the start of his term to a cynical denouement where we are expected to shruggingly grant that our president is and has always been mere nominal fiction – is the single most scandalous, and poorly reported, story in 21st century American politics.

 

CBS’s Jan Crawford said much the same thing on Face the Nation this past weekend, applying it only to the year 2024; she tactfully understates the matter. If one trusts the reporting of the Wall Street Journal – and expect more to emerge soon to buttress its claims – then President Biden’s mental and physical decline was in fact evident as early as the spring of 2021, mere months after he took office. Not only was this concealed by the White House, who managed Biden carefully to keep him out of public (and even private) eyes, it was treated with immense indifference – even hostility – by the Washington, D.C. press corps whose job it is to cover the presidency.

 

Now we are told the real story. Now we are “allowed” to know that which the American people, by all public polling, understood long before Joe Biden ever took the stage on June 27, 2024: The president of the United States was mentally collapsing, and nobody outside of conservative dissidents wanted to talk about it until Joe Biden forced the matter upon us all by dissolving in public. Just because this is pathetic does not mean it is not also disgraceful.