Joe Biden’s shambles is a stain on the Democratic Party

Even if he can beat Trump, he is not fit to lead the world for four years, says John Glancy.

US President Joe Biden shows a more strident side during a campaign event in Wisconsin on Friday. Picture: AFP

Here’s something terrifying you may not know. According to long-established Pentagon protocols, if its detection systems pick up what it believes to be a nuclear weapon coming towards America, the president will have six minutes to decide how to respond. About the amount of time it takes to brew a pot of coffee.

His information will not be certain – it could be a decoy, but America’s nuclear doctrine is to strike back before being hit. No one else can make the decision; only the president.

Now cast your mind forwards four years. Imagine it’s 4am on morning in July 2028, and an intercontinental ballistic missile is detected coming towards America, perhaps from North Korea. An 85-year-old President Joe Biden is hauled from his bed and rushed down to the situation room. The fate of America, the world, the entire future of humanity rests on his immediate decision. Can anyone say, with even a shred of confidence, that Biden will be in the right mental and physical shape to make that call? Will he wake up quickly enough? Can he even shuffle from his bedroom to the situation room in six minutes?

These are the ultimate stakes of the American presidency. And after his catastrophic debate performance, it is thuddingly obvious that Biden should not serve a second term in the job.

Never mind the iniquities of Donald Trump. Never mind whether Biden can actually beat Trump in November’s election, which is still possible but becoming less likely by the day. This man who just last week called himself the first black woman to be vice-president of the United States is simply not in a position to do the job for four more years.

He may not be fit for the job now. Biden has “good days and bad days and wretched days”, his biographer Evan Osnos said last week. Who, one really does wonder, is running the free world on the wretched days? His National Security Adviser, Jake Sullivan? His wife, Jill? His reprobate son, Hunter? That feral Alsatian that keeps biting secret service guards?

I don’t mean to sound nasty – ageing is a cruel business and we’ve all seen it happen to those we love. But the stakes are extraordinarily high here, so I’ll say it again: there is just no way someone in such obvious cognitive decline can serve another term.

President Joe Biden during his ABC interview at the weekend. Picture: ABC

How did it come to this? A once great political party held hostage by the wilful stubbornness of one man? Not so long ago even Biden knew a second term was probably beyond him. “I view myself as a transition candidate,” he said in the 2020 campaign. “I view myself as a bridge, not as anything else.”

But power corrupts even the most modest of egos, which Biden certainly isn’t. The only bridge Biden now resembles is the one that recently collapsed in Baltimore. He is headed for disaster, taking the Democratic Party with him. “We’re in F..k City,” as the Hollywood super-agent Ari Emanuel put it.

Much of the responsibility lies with Biden himself. As is so often the case with political titans, the seeds of their downfall are found in what made them great. Biden is resilient and a fighter; he has endured great personal tragedy, losing his wife and daughter in a car crash and then one of his sons to cancer. He has repeatedly defied the sneers of pundits and pollsters, coming back from the dead in the 2020 Democratic primaries. He can point to a decent if mixed presidential record.

But that obstinate self-belief has become a destructive force, blinding him to his present reality. “If the Lord Almighty came down and said, ‘Joe, get out of the race’, I’ll get out of the race, but the Lord Almighty is not coming down,” was the defiant message he delivered in a US ABC interview on Friday night. That faltering, though not disastrous, interview was supposed to stem the bleeding from Biden’s campaign. Instead it revealed the scale of his reckless self-delusion.

But the Democrats’ predicament is not just down to Biden. It reflects the failure of an entire party and the media ecosystem surrounding it. In the face of a cunning and dangerous adversary, they have shown a singular lack of courage and common sense. Everyone’s had something to say since the debate. The New Yorker editor, David Remnick, quoted Mark Twain, saying, “It is sad to go to pieces like this, but we all have to do it.” Watergate reporter Carl Bernstein reported that sources had told him of at least 15 times when Biden had simply not been at the races. Even Nancy Pelosi, the former Democratic Speaker, has expressed concerns about Biden’s condition.

But where on earth were these people over the past two years, when any even vaguely impartial observer could see what was coming? Did Bernstein simply forget to call his White House sources before last week?

Democrats and their media allies have become warped by partisanship and tribal thinking. The journey to this moment began the day Trump became president, when a state of liberal emergency was declared and all the usual rules of engagement were thrown out of the window. Reporting standards were junked as the media tried and tried and then failed to establish that Trump was some form of Russian agent. Democrats have waged eight years of lawfare, from impeachments to dubious prosecutions over hush money payments to porn stars.

All this was justified by pointing to the existential threat posed by Trump. It was a zero-sum game. And so, with a few honourable exceptions, barely anyone broke the Biden omerta, because to do so was to give succour to the enemy. This conspiracy of silence has, to put it mildly, backfired stupendously.

Trump is indeed a menace to democracy and often worthy of investigation. He’s also a congenital liar. But his special power is the bully’s ability to bring everyone down to his level. If all you end up caring about is beating Trump, no matter the cost, eventually you become him, willing to fabricate and dissemble and do anything to win. Eventually you end up with your press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, going the full Baghdad Bob, telling reporters that Biden’s bad debate performance was due to “jet lag” from travelling almost two weeks earlier.

Sensible Democrats are finally willing to admit they have made a dreadful mistake, and there is still time to change course. Those closest to Biden, the advisers and family who have become rich and powerful in his slipstream, must find the courage to say something. Before it really is too late.

The Sunday Times