Joe Biden’s confusion-in-chief: rage of ‘elderly man with poor memory’ who leads free world

President Joe Biden speaks at the White House in response to special counsel Robert Hur’s findings. Picture: Reuters

At last it’s official, from an unimpeachable source (so to speak): Joe Biden is mentally unfit to stand trial. He is, however, apparently mentally fit to be President.

Incidentally, it seems that Biden may also be guilty, technically at least, of criminal conduct, as special counsel Robert Hur found he did “wilfully retain and disclose classified materials”, after he left office as vice-president.

These two judgments together are the most devastating blows to Biden’s credibility in the long history of his long life.

There’s no reason to doubt that Biden is a patriot and he’s given his country loyal service. But if he ­really cares deeply about the ­republic, he should declare now that he’s not running for the presidency and let the Democrats pick a better candidate.

The Democrats have limited options for a replacement presidential candidate. Vice-President Kamala Harris is a deeply flawed politician with terrible poll numbers. Michelle Obama has no qualifications or relevant experience beyond the identity of her husband. California Governor Gavin Newsom is a liberal bore running a state that has got every policy wrong and whose citizens are fleeing in droves for Republican states.

There are other talented Democrats but they lack profile, traction and a relationship with the American people.

US Vice-President Kamala Harris. Picture: AFP

Indeed, a Biden sentence at a presidential news conference is a kind of act of state-sponsored terrorism. The words are apt to explode at any moment, showering bewildered civilians with their ­debris. Until now Biden’s officials could patch up a semi-plausible semi-explanation. A lot of the President’s hesitation, they say, comes not from mental decline but his lifelong stutter; he has ­always got his words mangled, even when he was young and vigorous, some folks are like that; and he’s always been a windbag, meandering along with his folksy anecdotes. But you should see him in private, he’s tough and mean and completely in charge. Although these explanations were never really plausible.

Now Hur, a perfectly reputable guy appointed by Biden’s own ­Attorney-General, Merrick Garland, has found that Biden presents as “a sympathetic, well meaning, elderly man with a poor memory”.

Yikes!

Mr Biden departs after his press conference. Picture: AFP

And when he says poor ­memory that’s pretty substantial legal understatement. In sworn testimony of critical importance, for which Biden would have prepared assiduously, the President couldn’t remember when he was vice-president or when his son, Beau, died, and had the greatest trouble reading and making sense of his own notes. That is surely the most damning assessment of a President’s mental acuity since Woodrow Wilson was in bed recovering from his devastating stroke.

It’s always fraught to speculate on anyone’s health, but the whole world has a legitimate interest in the health of the president of the US. Biden seems to be in that familiar stage of cognitive decline in which he has good days and bad, good hours and clouded hours, when with diligent preparation and coaching he can sometimes be passably lucid.

He’s often at his best when angry. And he likes to get angry, though not personally vituperative like Trump. But mock righteous outrage has always been part of the Biden shtick. The adrenaline rush, the blood pulsing through the veins, often produces his best moments. But in this vitally important news conference, he wasn’t angry all the time. It was when giving, for him, a pretty complicated and competent answer that he called President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt “the President of Mexico”. He was talking about the southern border of Gaza, you can almost plot the neural track – southern border of Gaza, southern border crisis, got it! Mexico.

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. Picture: AFP

The legal element of this case is also important. The special counsel says Biden wilfully retained and disclosed highly sensitive national security documents after he left the vice-presidency. But he doesn’t recommend prosecution. FBI ­director James Comey similarly found Hillary Clinton as secretary of state breached the law in using a private email server for tens of thousands of emails in which she conducted official business. But he too recommended no prosecution.

You see, prosecutors have a good deal of discretion. But Trump can argue with devastating force that Democrats don’t get prosecuted, while Republicans, or at least, Trump, do get prosecuted, for ­essentially the same behaviour.

All of this by no means guarantees that Biden would necessarily lose to Trump, whose own characteristic derangement is more often temperamental than cognitive. Still, it would be hard to say which of the two elderly men, also known as the leading candidates, would have the better chance of succeeding with an insanity ­defence before any court.