Wooley: Trump better hope Biden doesn’t forget his sense of decency as easily as he forgets his lines
A befuddled basket case and a convicted criminal – they belong in a nursing home and prison, not the Oval Office, writes Charles Wooley
There are two ways of looking at what happened in America this week. Both are true.
Donald Trump just convincingly won what must be the most important debate of this century.
Joe Biden revealed a mental confusion so frightening that not just his own Democratic Party but the whole world is wondering if he is capable of leading the United States and the West until the next election. Much less whether he is capable of winning it.
Biden is the main election issue right now when it should be the delusional madness of the convicted criminal Trump. But polling immediately after Joe’s shambolic performance revealed that three-quarters of Americans thought the President should step down from the electoral contest.
Back in 1960, Richard Nixon lost the presidential debate to the charismatic young JFK. Not only because he was a little stolid but because he had a five o’clock shadow and a sweaty upper lip. Had Nixon applied an antiperspirant and shaved beforehand, he would’ve been fine. He didn’t totter to the dais. He didn’t forget to finish sentences. He knew what he was talking about. It was a close-run contest.
Post-Kennedy, when Nixon much later became president of the US, he demonstrated how totally unsuited he was for the most powerful political office in the world. With Trump again in the wings, we remember how Mark Twain told us history mightn’t always repeat itself, but it certainly does rhyme.
No make-up nor make-over could have helped during this week’s debate. Joe appeared befuddled and clueless. But his loyal wife Jill thinks he only “had a bad day”. But it was not just a bad day. It was possibly the worst day in any American political contest, any time in history. To encourage her husband to stand again is to inflict the awful political theatre of cruelty on a decent man who has increasingly become a joke and an object of ridicule.
Still, Joe agrees with his wife’s optimistic diagnosis. Back on autocue a day later, he was punching the air and declaring, “I know I’m not a young man, to state the obvious”, to supporters at a campaign rally in North Carolina. He conceded: “I don’t walk as easy as I used to, but I know what I do know. I know how to tell the truth. I know how to do this job. I know how to tell the truth and I know how to do the job. I intend to win this election; when you get knocked down, you get back up.”
The desperate Democrats were cheering madly. Presumably because the President of the United States could actually read from a prepared script without falling off the stage. And that he hadn’t forgotten to do up his fly.
The point isn’t the President’s age. It’s his mental decline. I know plenty of people in their 80s who are sharp and competent. And people 20 years younger who appear to have wandered off into the mists of dementia.
Age, of course, must be a factor to be considered in public life. But relative youth is no guarantee that all will be well. Hitler came to power at the age of 43. Stalin and Mao are generally regarded as having killed more people than Hitler and did so when both men were much younger than Biden is now.
What a choice!
The free world trembles at being led by a man who can’t finish a sentence because he has already forgotten how it began only moments ago. Or being led by a proven liar and convicted felon who threatened the future of the American republic by refusing to accept the people’s democratic verdict. He then aided and abetted the infamous January 6, 2021, sacking of the Capitol Building.
From a European perspective, with NATO confronting the spectre of another general war, the present horrific American scene must seem reminiscent of the decline of Rome.
It is, of course, possible that Joe Biden could serve another term without bringing ruin. In the quiet sanctity of the Oval Office, surrounded by capable and experienced advisers, President Biden might simply follow his impulses as a decent man under the wise guidance of others. He might follow these rules:
Avoid any kind of live debate.
Avoid press conferences.
Avoid speaking publicly without an autocue.
Avoid stairs.
It might work. But of course, it can’t. Because President Biden has become unelectable. His party knows that and surely so must he.
Obstinacy or vanity or both is all that keeps this president in the race.
Oddly, this week thanks to a startling judgment from the Trump-friendly US Supreme Court, Biden might have become a much more potent president.
This judgment, written by conservative Chief Justice John Roberts, read: “We conclude that under our constitutional structure of separated powers, the nature of presidential power requires that a former president have some immunity from criminal prosecution for official acts during his tenure in office.”
The notion of “presumptive immunity” puts the president above the law so long as he can claim that his actions, no matter what, were “official”.
One dissenting judge, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, wrote these astounding words about the new presidential powers: “Whether he uses his official powers in any way, under the majority’s reasoning he will now be insulated from criminal prosecution.
“Orders the Navy’s Seal Team 6 to assassinate a political rival? Immune.
“Organises a military coup to hold on to power? Immune.
“Takes a bribe in exchange for a pardon? Immune.
“Immune, immune, immune.”
What might happen now? Biden looks dead in the waters, but the Supreme Court’s extraordinary judgment suggests stuff that even the most lurid Hollywood script writer couldn’t make up. This could become a page-turner to
out-Grisham Grisham.
Biden has rightly denounced the Supreme Court rulings with the words, “this nation was founded on the presumption that there are no kings in America”.
But has it occurred to the President that these rulings cut two ways?
If they empower a former president surely they equally empower an incumbent. This is indeed an age to listen for the historical echoes of violent decline. Like that dangerous Roman thought from Justice Sotomayor that the Navy Seals might be employed much as Roman Emperors used the Praetorian Guard, for security and for assassinations.
Don’t tell me Joe is too “sleepy” to realise that what is legitimate sauce for the presumptive goose is also legitimate sauce for the incumbent gander.
Fortunately, Biden despite his failing powers appears to be a good and decent man. So, for now, given the presidency’s new despotic super-powers, Donald Trump had better hope that Joe Biden doesn’t forget his innate sense of decency as easily as he forgets his lines.
Charles Wooley is a Tasmanian-based journalist.
Join the conversation
‘What nonsense – no one has divided Australia like Labor and their ludicrous ‘Voice’ referendum’
Barnaby Joyce’s massive political move has divided Aussies like never before. HAVE YOUR SAY
Read more
‘He’s a failure at every job’: Minister’s brutal smackdown
Two Aussie politicians are in the crosshairs after a string of controversial moves. HAVE YOUR SAY
Read more