The claim that Joe Biden is switched on enough to be president for four more years brutally unravels

Joe Biden’s alarming performance against Donald Trump in their first debate has made his team’s previous spin seem laughable.

COMMENT

Spare a prayer this weekend for the poor souls who will be sent out onto America’s television screens to insist that, behind the scenes, when no inconvenient cameras are snooping on him, Joe Biden is really very sharp, switched on and youthful for his years.

That is what the White House, top Democrats and various other individuals of dubious credibility have been telling us for months. Years, in fact.

It was always a tough line to sell. Like someone claiming the sky is fluorescent green, actually, but only when you can’t see it. You might think it’s blue. It might be blue every time you look at it. But trust us, when your view is blocked, it is definitely fluorescent green.

Yeah, nah. Joe Biden is too old to be president for another four years. Everyone knows it. And there’s no point gaslighting the public anymore, not after that excruciating display in his first of a paltry two scheduled debates against Donald Trump.

Oops. Picture: Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP

Here, because it’s always nice to provide illustrative examples, is Mr Biden arguing in favour of taxing the rich more to pay for public services. We’re talking about the bread and butter of progressive politics. The Weet-Bix, the scrambled eggs. Something so common and so easy to throw together that it should be doable on autopilot with a podcast blaring in the background.

“We’d be able to wipe out his debt, help make sure all those things we need to do – childcare, elder care, making sure that we continue to strengthen our healthcare system,” Mr Biden within the first few minutes of the debate.

“Making sure that we’re able to make every single solitary person eligible for what I’ve been able to do with the uhh, with the Covid, excuse me, with dealing with everything we have to do with, look, if – we finally beat Medicare.”

Finally, Medicare gets the beatdown it deserves! Finally, every American will be eligible for what Mr Biden has been able to do with “the Covid”, or rather with “dealing with everything we have to do with”.

CNN’s debate anchors, given the unenviable job of parsing and reacting to such perplexing gibberish, chose to merely say, “thank you, President Biden,” and move on with their lives. Ever had a toddler hand you a drawing of what appears to be your house before telling you “Is cwocodile?” And then you just say, “thank you so much, it’s lovely?” Same vibe.

(Here is where I note that Mr Biden’s wife, Dr Jill Biden, praised his performance post-debate by saying, in her best kindergarten teacher voice: “Joe you did such a great job, you answered every question.” What a good boy.)

Two men in allegedly full possession of their mental faculties. Picture: Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP

Of course, Mr Trump was there as well, and the evening’s steadfastly non-interventionist moderation policy helped him immensely. Because answering “every question” is not his forte, nor is saying things that aren’t flagrantly and shamelessly untrue.

To continue the tortured kindergarten metaphor: if late-stage Biden is the kid in a corner chewing vacantly on a crayon, late-stage Trump is the one overturning tables, ripping heads off stuffed animals and chucking a tantrum every five minutes. Then denying that any of it even happened.

There are few sentences out of Mr Trump’s mouth in the debate that would fail to qualify as illustrative here, but to give you one or two, here he is talking about military veterans.

“I had the highest approval rating for veterans, taking care of the VA,” Mr Trump claimed, referring to the department that handles veterans’ affairs in the US.

“He has the worst. He has gotten rid of all the things that I approved – Choice, that I got through Congress. All of the different things I approved, they abandoned.”

Nice of Mr Trump to get the Veterans Choice program, designed to get veterans faster healthcare, through Congress. Except it was passed through Congress in 2014, more than two years before he became president, and signed into law by Barack Obama. He had literally nothing to do with it.

At another point Mr Trump claimed, in all seriousness, that his opponent would quadruple everyone’s taxes. Quadruple them! What?

The fundamental, character-defining truth about Donald Trump is that he talks out of his rear-end all the time, and this debate was no different.

To be fair, he captured the mood of the evening quite well. Picture: Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP

I have not yet conducted an exhaustive study of the transcript, but by my reckoning about a third of Mr Trump’s output during the debate can be summarised thus: “Things were perfect when I was president, better than anyone had ever seen. And now they’re terrible, worse than anyone has ever seen. To the extent that we barely even have a country anymore.”

This was his position on essentially every issue, regardless of the facts, and quite often in direct violation of them. But his sentences were actual sentences. He spoke them with the self-assuredness (and sadly the inaccuracy) of a man taking a drunken trip to the loo at midnight.

Mr Biden didn’t simply fail to push back on the falsehoods; he proved himself incapable of doing so. He reeked of weakness and uncertainty. Which is less than ideal when the world is depending on America’s president to stare down the likes of Putin and Xi.

It crystallised something: each man, in his own unique and delightful way, is a tad delusional.

Mr Trump lives in a fantasy world where he actually won the 2020 election, and handled the Covid pandemic competently, and was respected by a world that actually spent four long years laughing at him. His grasp on reality is tenuous at best.

Mr Biden, meanwhile, has deluded himself into thinking he is the best person to confront Mr Trump again. By what logic? Because he defeated Mr Trump in 2020? When virtually every condition was in his favour? When he was facing a horrendously unpopular incumbent who had buckled during a global crisis? Hardly a titanic political achievement, that.

Mr Biden leaves the stage. Picture: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images via AFP

Now, it’s Mr Biden who is the widely reviled incumbent. The conditions of the contest are very much in Mr Trump’s favour this time. And all he needs to do to regain office is flip a tiny fraction of the electorate in a few key states.

A part of you – the part that somehow endured 90 minutes of these two ancient men barking at each other with some empathy intact – wants to feel for Mr Biden. Think of all the decades he spent seeking this job, only to be well past his prime when he finally grasped it. It was genuinely painful to watch him fumble around so gormlessly on stage.

Then you remember that he didn’t need to be there. He could have conceded that his time was over, and stepped aside for someone new. He did this to himself.

There was a vicious irony at play when other prominent Democrats were chucked onto the airwaves to defend his performance. The average viewer must wonder: why isn’t this person the candidate? Why, when there are all these quite coherent people with essentially the same policy positions as Mr Biden, is the old guy still the figurehead?

There’s an implicit disrespect in Mr Biden’s insistence that he be the candidate again. It’s disrespectful to the Americans he is supposed to be serving; to the international allies who depend on American strength; to the other leaders in his party who could have performed better on that stage.

By standing in their way, Mr Biden implies that none of those other potential candidates are ready. And when he can’t even clear the lowest bar of competence, that is a quietly scathing indictment of the American left.

Twitter: @SamClench