Joe Biden’s cognitive deficits are increasingly apparent, even to the most amateur observer.
Whether he has dementia at this point is immaterial. Half the world thinks he does and that weakens the United States and imperils us all.
Whether he is falling up the stairs of Air Force One or falling off a stationary bike, whether he is wandering around on stage in a fog or clutching cheat sheets designed for a 4-year-old, whether he is shouting incoherently or whispering creepily, the optics are shocking.
With his 80th birthday approaching next month, even if most Americans are too polite or willfully unobservant to say so, it’s clear that Biden is not up to the world’s most difficult job.
He projects weakness and folly at a time of international turmoil. Disrespect for the president echoes around the world, among allies and enemies alike.
Even when he went to London last month for the Queen’s funeral, people were filmed yelling, “Let’s go, Brandon” at his passing limousine. He and first lady Jill Biden arrived late to Westminster Abbey and, after they were ushered to the cheap seats 14 rows back, he was mocked for playing with his tongue during the service.
It’s criminal that the Democratic Party has placed America in such an invidious position with an emotionally febrile part-time president who appears not to be all there an awful lot — either in his mind or at the White House. The least they could do is cover up his deficits more skillfully.
Last week, at a press conference, much was made of his calling out for recently deceased Congresswoman Jackie Walorski.
“Jackie, are you here?” he said. “Where’s Jackie?” he continued, looking around the startled room. “I think she wasn’t going to be here.”
Well, no, because she died in August, as he should have remembered since he issued a long public condolence letter after her death in a car crash, and the conference he was speaking at was partly in honor of her memory, with a film montage of her life due to be played.
The memory lapse would likely have passed unnoticed, like so many of Biden’s oopsies, except for some reason the White House press corps decided they had had enough of being gaslit about the president’s mental fitness.
“What happened here?” reporters asked of flummoxed White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, who only had one glib talking point prepared, which she repeated over and over: Walorski “was on his mind — she was top of mind.” But the answer cleared up nothing.
“Was the president confused?” asked one reporter. “Was something written in the teleprompter that he didn’t recognize? Help us explain what happened here?”
Another reporter asked, “Why, if she and the family is top of mind, does the president think she’s living, and in the room?”
Yet another pointed out, “I have John Lennon top of mind just about every day, but I’m not looking around for the man.”
No satisfactory answer was forthcoming, and how could there be?
There is no explanation for how anyone of sound mind could make such a bungle.
Pity the president
The late congresswoman’s brother, Keith Walorski, handled the “big mess-up” with compassion: “All I’m saying right now about the president is bless his heart for trying,” he told reporters, adding that Biden is “doing the best he can do with what he’s got right now … I just feel sorry for him.”
Ouch. That is the decent response, although it is no good for the president of the free world to be an object of pity.
As dishonest and destructive as Biden has been, it’s hard to see an elderly man humiliating himself every day while the White House continues to pretend there is nothing to see and the media pretends he is a serious candidate for 2024.
Saturday night, Biden dressed up in a bow tie to deliver another angry speech railing against his “semi-fascist” political opponents to a Congressional Black Caucus dinner in Washington: “I know I’m being banged up by the Republicans, but come bring it on,” he snarled.
“Hate will not prevail in America,” he bellowed later, warming to his favorite imaginary topic. “White supremacy will not have the last word.”
How many more times must we endure these spiteful outbursts from a president who promised to unite the country?
How much longer must we cringe as he reads “end of quote, repeat the line” off the teleprompter?
How many times must we wince as he ad-libs recklessly in a speech about international tinderboxes, like Russia, Ukraine, the Nord Stream pipeline, or Taiwan?
How much longer must we watch him wandering around lost on stage after giving a speech, appearing to shake imaginary hands or gesture to invisible staff?
The embarrassment is not just for a 79-year-old career politician who needs cue cards to tell him when to stand and where to sit and what to write in a condolence book. It’s for every American.
When Biden went to Israel in the summer, he stumbled off Air Force One asking, “What am I doing now?,” had to be steered onto the red carpet and then accidentally waxed lyrical about the “honor” of the Holocaust.
“The truth is that it’s not Biden who is senile, all of America is senile,” was the conclusion of Israeli newspaper Haaretz.
Who’s to blame
It is at least a staff failure that Biden is left to wander around confused in front of the cameras. Why isn’t a minder always at his side to subtly steer him off stage?
He keeps looking to Secret Service agents to step in and guide him. But it’s not their job to play nursemaid.
It’s also a wife failure. Dr. Jill ought to be saving her husband’s dignity, but she always looks out of sorts when she is in place to perform the role, whether it’s telling him what direction to walk in the Rose Garden or helping him put on a jacket at the airport.
It’s not easy, as anyone knows who has experienced the aging of a loved one. But Nancy Reagan would never have allowed her husband to be repeatedly humiliated in public.
At stake is the nation’s honor, at least.
