During one of his painful recent attempts to shore up confidence in his health and competence US President Joe Biden said he would only step down if the Lord Almighty told him.
Well, the Lord works in mysterious ways, including perhaps via a growing group of Democrats who are suggesting he change his mind — and perhaps the White House’s own extraordinary incompetence.
During a testy press briefing at the White House on Monday (Tuesday AEST), both of the administration’s top spokespeople Karine Jean-Pierre and John Kirby said that Biden would be giving a “big boy” press conference this Thursday at the conclusion of the NATO summit the president is hosting.
“I guess a big boy press conference is what we’re calling it,” Kirby said matter-of-factly.
For a president who has long been accused of avoiding media scrutiny, granting the fewest press conferences and interviews of any by far, it was an odd choice of words.
Almost as bad, perhaps, as First lady Jill Biden’s excruciating “you did a good job, you answered all the questions” in the aftermath of Biden’s horror debate that’s prompted growing calls for him to step aside.
The 81-year-old president, engaged in a self-declared frenetic campaign to show Americans he’s not an increasingly demented old man, didn’t help himself at the White House July 4 celebrations either, yelling out “Ho, ho, ho” after his wife introduced him to the audience as if he was Santa Claus. Earlier on the same day he told a Philadelphia radio station that he was “proud to be, as I said, the first vice-president, first black woman, to serve with a black president”.
At a crucial meeting of concerned Democratic Party governors at the White House last week, Mr Biden reassured Hawaii’s Josh Green that he was physically fine. “It’s just my brain,” Biden said, before saying he’d be scheduling fewer events after 8pm.
During his much anticipated, 22-minute interview with ABC News’s George Stephanopoulos last week a dispute broke out with White House and ABC transcribers over whether the president said he would do “the goodest job” he could do or the “good as job”, neither of which makes any grammatical sense. He didn’t help his cause during a call into MSNBC’s Morning Joe on Monday (Tuesday AEST) either, suddenly yelling down the phone to the two sympathetic hosts.
Look, I’m not a political consultant, but I’m thinking that Biden screaming on Morning Joe isn’t going to soothe any souls about his condition.
— Bonchie (@bonchieredstate) July 8, 2024
How easily he’s angered is a symptom of his condition. pic.twitter.com/Sky56wtv6p
He mustn’t yell at wife Dr Jill, at least, who berated journalists for shouting questions at her after a re-election rally she headlined in Florida on Monday. The President was preparing for this week’s NATO summit, especially the big boy press conference.
The President’s attempts to project alacrity and vigour have failed but he has remained stubbornly insistent he’s not going anywhere, sending a long letter to Democrat congress members on Monday that urged the party to stop speculating about his future.
“I wouldn’t be running again if I did not absolutely believe I was the best person to defeat Donald Trump in November,” he wrote.
But fewer and fewer senior Democrats agree with him, top Senator Patty Murray being the latest to break ranks, urging Mr Biden to “seriously consider” his future and joining at least 10 other congressional Democrats in calling for change.
Expect more public criticism of Biden in coming days from leading Democrats, who must realise they’ll need to fight the President’s defiance with ever greater public criticism of their own if they have any chance of blasting him out of the party’s nomination process before the August party convention in Chicago.
Unless his own cabinet agrees to remove him as president using the 25th amendment, an unlikely prospect at this stage, his growing pool of critics have no other option but increasingly pejorative assessments of the president in public, hoping to damage him politically so much he has no choice but to stand aside.
Expect things to get ugly.
More Coverage
Whoever wins, era of American discord is far from over
With polls neck and neck and the country polarised, the anger generated by a turbulent election campaign is unlikely to subside. And yet, the US has faced worse strife and democracy has held.
Investment in green R&D takes sting out of transition
Ineffective climate policies are delivering far less than promised, at much greater expense.