Editor’s View: Global security at risk if US President Joe Biden stays in race
When our loved ones age, we often worry about them when they have their car keys. Well, Joe Biden has the nuclear codes, writes The Editor.
Opinion
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Who wins the presidential election in the United States of America this November is entirely a matter for the voters of that grand democracy.
An Australian newspaper taking a side or backing a candidate is as relevant as it would be an American masthead expressing a view on who should be our prime minister.
However, the recent revelations about President Joe Biden’s health affect Australia’s national security – and from that view, there needs to be change. He must not contest the election. That is because, as the proverbial truth about the role of the US president goes, the person in the Oval Office must be ready to take that 2am phone call. And the inconvenient truth is Mr Biden’s aides say he is these days at his most effective only between 10am-4pm, and he is likely to make mistakes during the other 18 hours of the day.
Even if Mr Biden’s shocking performance in his televised debate last month with the Republican candidate former president Donald Trump was due to one of the various excuses so far trotted out (a heavy head cold, delayed jet lag, too much preparation), it exposed what his aides and family somehow kept largely unremarked until now – a rapid decline in his mental acuity.
This is not to say President Biden is a poor candidate; nor is it to cast judgment on his record in office since, as a former vice-president, he defeated president Trump in 2020.
It is simply that – at age 81 – Mr Biden’s health is clearly declining, and rapidly. This is not an illness. It is an inevitability. It will happen to most of us at some point. And it is happening to Mr Biden now.
We have all had experience with the same thing, when a parent or grandparent enters their dotage. It is a challenging and emotional time, and it usually happens in private.
That is why the New York Post so perfectly encapsulated the mood of anyone who watched Mr Biden’s debate disaster on its front page the day after. It concluded: “Just Sad”.
Sad, yes. But in this case it is also dangerous. And that is the central point in why the perspicacity of an international leader is of any direct relevance to Australians.
When our loved ones age, we often worry about them when they have their car keys. Well, President Biden has the nuclear codes.
And by his stubborn refusal to stand aside, he is asking Americans to allow him to keep those codes – and to occupy that most important of offices – until the start of 2029, when he will be 86 years old.
The President’s capacity right now matters greatly, of course.
But more important is the potential impact on the entire globe if that Oval Office is occupied for the next four and a half years by someone who even today confuses Italy with France, as Mr Biden did last week.
Is a man who admits he almost fell asleep during a 90-minute televised debate with his political opponent really someone who has the stamina to be the democratic counterweight until the year 2029 to the Xi Jinpings, Vladimir Putins, King Jong-uns, and Ali Khameneis in our increasingly fractured world? The answer is clearly no.
As David Fagan, a former editor of The Courier-Mail, observed in a column elsewhere this week: “Based on what we’ve seen of Joe Biden, he is in no condition to hold executive responsibility, let alone ultimate power. His stiffness of walking maybe immaterial, as may his quavering voice, but the noticeable loss of sharpness, the struggle to harness thoughts, let alone the words to describe them should leave us all quaking in despair if, by some remote chance, he stays in the presidential race and defeats Donald Trump in November.”
Mr Biden has served his nation with distinction for more than half a century. He is only one of 46 people in history to have been President of the United States of America. He can retire with enormous pride in his achievements. And he should.
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Originally published as Editor’s View: Global security at risk if US President Joe Biden stays in race
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