Assessing Biden’s faculties

During the campaign I thought the over/under on the decline of Biden’s faculties should be set at 40 percent. Since then I have upped it to 50 percent. Until he takes a cognitive test, we are stuck with guesses based on our observations and inferences. Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Michael Goodwin notes in the New York Post today the visible “evidence he is not up to the job. His frailty and mannerisms hardly inspire confidence, and the obvious attempts to hide him from extended questioning fuels more doubts about his fitness.”

Goodwin doesn’t even take up Biden’s multifarious public senior moments. This week we had the “Sir, there is something on your chin” display, with a minder passing a note to Biden regarding the literal egg on his face. Let’s take the incident and look on the bright side.

First, Biden successfully deciphered the message and took action. He can read and comprehend.

Second, he not only cleaned himself up, he demonstrated good hand-eye-mouth coordination in the process.

Third, he did all this while multitasking. He stayed on the livestreamed call discussing wildfires with a group of governors while Kackling Kamala Harris was speaking. He wasn’t listening to her, though he nevertheless knew she was talking.

Fourth, he showed awareness of his surroundings. He subtly sought to conceal his grooming problem.

But what was he doing turning the note over and staring at its blank side? I wondered.

We have to read deep into the New York Post story to find that this too was canny: “After all that, the president undermined his own attempt at subtlety by picking up the card with the hastily written note and used the back of it to take notes.” He was faking it. Smart!

Biden inadvertently disclosed the note via AP photographer Andrew Harnik. Harnik snapped the photo and tweeted it out (below). Staring at the back side of the note card, Biden was trying to convey “situation normal,” as it was in the SNAFU sense. I take it from the incident that Biden is an idiotic boor. However, these are conditions that preexisted his cognitive decline (whatever it is).

Notice: All comments are subject to moderation. Our comments are intended to be a forum for civil discourse bearing on the subject under discussion. Commenters who stray beyond the bounds of civility or employ what we deem gratuitous vulgarity in a comment — including, but not limited to, “s***,” “f***,” “a*******,” or one of their many variants — will be banned without further notice in the sole discretion of the site moderator.

Responses