Whether gratuitous or not, Special Counsel Robert Hur’s evaluation of President Joe Biden’s cognitive abilities sting the incumbent and his camp so much because they ring so true.
What Hur said in his report released last week — that Biden came across to his investigators and would to jurors as a “sympathetic, well-meaning elderly man with a poor memory” — echoes what Biden’s critics have been saying publicly for most of his presidency and what his backers have fretted over privately.
Still, as could be expected in politics, the Democrats’ public response to Hur’s report — which cleared Biden of any criminal wrongdoing over his handling of classified documents during his previous positions as vice president and senator — has been to get defensive and go into denial.
The president’s loyalists accuse Hur, a Republican, of misusing his position as special counsel to try to undermine Biden’s reelection. They say that Biden — despite his well-documented difficulties of keeping world leaders’ names straight, among other gaffes — is completely in possession of all his faculties. They attest that Biden, despite his advancing age of 81, can handle the demands and pressures not just of the current four-year term but one more after that.
Many from both parties don’t believe it. While Republicans are licking their chops over this obvious electoral vulnerability, Democrats are saying it’s too late to change course and come up with another nominee.
But is it?
The nominating conventions are this summer, and the general election is still almost nine months away. The nation has had to make White House transitions much faster than this in the past when a president has been assassinated. Surely, the Democratic Party leadership could figure out a way to fast-track another nominee, should the leadership convince Biden to drop out of the 2024 race.
By doing so, they would be acting more responsibly than the Republicans, who are failing in their obligation to put up a candidate less flawed than Donald Trump. GOP officeholders have largely decided that in order to save their own political necks, they are willing to bow to Trump and empower his revenge crusade, even if it means risking a constitutional crisis should he be convicted between now and the general election on any of the 71 criminal counts he is facing.
The Democrats likewise have to know how risky it is to have someone in the White House who is in cognitive decline, as Biden apparently is. The president of the most powerful country in the world has to make complex and careful decisions all the time. Although a president has layers of advisers, usually that advice comes from competing angles, and a president has to decide who makes the best case on what to do. The job requires a quick, energetic and adept mind — something many have concluded Biden no longer possesses. Adversarial foreign nations that have reached the same conclusion are going to be tempted to test American resolve and power.
What the Biden inner circle is facing is no different than what grown children face with aging parents who don’t want to give up their car keys when their sight, reflexes and ability to quickly process information deteriorate. It is uncomfortable to take that step of depriving the elderly of their independence. It can cause bitter feelings, at least initially. But it is irresponsible to ignore the reality and put innocent people at risk.
For the good of Biden and the good of the country, he must be convinced that running for reelection is a mistake. It’s late, but not too late, to do the right thing.
