- In my last post last night I wrote that I could think of no reasonable, generous explanation for President Biden mixing up the presidents of Egypt and Mexico, but that that mixup was not as concerning to me as his statements that he talked to the presidents of France and Germany after they were long dead.
Now, via Axios, I have the context of the El-Sisi-Lopez Obrador flub and it's inexplicable and devastating. A personal anecdote to illustrate: My long-deceased, beloved father, when he was still alive would be talking to one or two of us, his four sons, and sometimes would run through all four names before lighting on the correct one whom he was addressing. It became a running joke in the family. So, if President Biden had been talking generally about world leaders and had mixed up El-Sisi with Lopez Obrador, that is one level of mental decline. But my dad never said, for example, "Ben the dentist" or "Mike the lawyer", confusing name and profession, compounding the error and exposing a second, deeper level of decline. So then, this was the context for President Biden's flub. Talking about Gaza, he said:
"I think as you know initially, the president of Mexico, Sisi, did not want to open up the gate to humanitarian material to get in."
Inexplicably and devastatingly, he gave the president of Mexico the profession of opening the Rafa gate in Gaza to humanitarian aid for the Palestinians. Was he thinking wall-like structures generally? Gates, walls. A gate is sort of a wall. Sisi, Obrador, gates, walls. There is no non-painful parsing that can be made.
In my less generous, infrequent moments I have associated President Biden with two personages, one real, the other fictional. The real is another dead German president, Paul von Hindenburg, another 80-something, who was a figurehead of the German nation, the only unifying element, and a prop for Hitler as he made his last seizure of state power.
The other, fictional, is superannuated Grandmother Smallweed of Bleak House whose mind is completely gone, who sits with head lolling at trivets hanging from the kitchen ceiling, as in my mind's eye I sometimes see President Biden fixate on walls, gates, borders, the objects liberating some loose atoms of association with letting things in, keeping other things out, and which result in confused ejaculations on money (Grandmother Smallweed) or the Hamas-Israel war.
Those are the unfavorable images. Countering them I have before me President Biden's many, exceptional accomplishments. As he also said last night, "I've been president and I put this country back on its feet." He has. He has been a GREAT president.
Yet...One Biden associate said that his staff shouldn't have let him speak last night, "after a long day", but should have counseled him to wait until morning when he would be "fresh". Then what about the "3 a.m. phone call", the theme of Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign? I am worried about a 3 a.m. bombshell after his handling of yesterday's 3 p.m. bombshell.
- Another Biden associate made the same point that I did last night, that voter concerns about the president's age and mental acuity were already baked into the political pie; that he has enough time between now and November to convince voters that he has the right stuff.
But, as a matter of purely political baking, that point is circular. It was a problem before, it is a bigger problem now--it's a problem, however high the cake rises. Voters objected to the ingredients before; they will likely object more now, and may refuse to eat the cake.
- I wrote yesterday that Biden should drop out of the race. Whether I wrote it here or in group texts to my family my reference was to LBJ in 1968, who dropped his bid for reelection after the New Hampshire primary. If Biden dropped out now, I thought, there's still time for us Democrats to throw the nominating process open to other candidates.
I was wrong. Eighty percent of state deadlines for qualifying for primary ballots have passed. So we Democrats are stuck with President Biden as our candidate and we the country are stuck with a choice between Joe Biden and Donald Trump. And that called up my final consideration.
- In a democracy voters have agency. It is a practical agency. It is also a moral agency. Those who say, as a practical matter, Biden's age and mental abilities are already baked in, elide over the moral dilemma they present us with. Last night, I didn't know, and I still don't, what I will do when I vote in November. I know what I will not do, and that is vote for Trump; but is it right of me, is it moral, is it being a responsible voter, to vote for the reelection of President Biden, at the end of whose second term, will be 87 years old when the Special Counsel Robert Hur all but found him mentally incompetent to face criminal charges?
In my voting life I have cast my ballot for someone other than the Democratic nominee twice; in 1992, I wrote in Daniel Patrick Moynihan rather than perforate my ballot for Bill Clinton; in 2004 I voted for George W. Bush over John Kerry. I came to regret both, the first derisively ("a write-in, you twee moron"), the second gravely. At this moment, those two painful experiences in mind, I don't know for sure whether I will not vote, write-in someone or swallow hard and vote for Biden. I wish I didn't have a difficult choice and wonder whether the castigated No Labels could give me, and us, a third option.
