Aging Joe may need a campaign jolt
Too bad for Joe Biden: well-meaning but old, doddering, and forgetful, unable to recall even the year his son Beau died. That’s how the president was recently portrayed by special Department of Justice counsel Robert K. Hur.
A Trump-appointed federal prosecutor assigned by Attorney General Merrick Garland to examine Biden’s post vice-presidential handling of classified documents, Hur thus handed the president a golden opportunity.
Encapsulated, the opportunity consists of disproving the notion, widespread even before Hur’s slurs, that Biden, 81, was too old for another four pressure-packed years in the White House.
The shape of Biden’s response to the Hur assertions remains uncertain. It’s pretty clear, though, that he must do something. Maybe even something dramatic. The issue of his age is not going away. And while the Donald Trump MAGA crowd is beyond his reach, there are important segments of voters – independents and even some Democrats – who must be convinced that the president is mentally and physically up to the challenge.
Otherwise, voters he might have captured could stay home on Election Day, thereby handing the job to Trump – the manifestly unqualified, dangerously autocratic, legally challenged, mentally suspect king of chaos and leader of the Republican Party.
(Honest, it wasn’t easy writing that characterization. How the party of Lincoln and Reagan twisted itself into the party of Trump is frightening even to think about, let alone accept as true.)
The country is so closely divided politically that even a small percentage of erstwhile Biden supporters declining to cast ballots in November could prove fatal to Biden and to the great cause he now represents, almost by default: the health and viability of American democracy.
There’s a political maxim that voters’ concerns, whatever they may be, must be addressed. The stratagem the Biden campaign evidently has chosen is to deflect attention away from the candidate’s perceived shortcoming to those of his opponent’s. Trump will continue to present plenty of opportunities for the latter tactic to work just fine, at least up to a point. The question is whether the contrast with Trump will be enough to get Biden across the finish line.
It ought to be possible, indeed it’s probably imperative, that the Biden campaign both compare and contrast and address the age issue head-on.
The compare and contrast part is easy; Trump has more foibles than PennDOT has potholes. At the same time, answering concerns about his mental and physical acuity poses certain challenges and substantial risks for the president.
What to do? For one thing, Biden needs to get out there more. More political rallies. More formal press conferences. An initial blitz of both rallies and of exchanges with reporters over a two- or three- or four-week period might be enough to clear away doubts.
If these efforts bomb, as is likely (three-and-a-half largely successful years in office for Biden have failed to calm the waters), the nuclear option may be in order -nuclear in this case meaning an examination of Biden by a panel of medical experts to pass on his mental and physical fitness for office.
There is precedent for this.
In 1932, Franklin Roosevelt, a polio victim, invited a team of doctors to make a judgment on his fitness. This came on the heels of a published report that FDR might be “utterly unfit physically” for the president.
“Jolted” by the report in Time magazine, Roosevelt met the moment by fast, decisive action, according to his biographer Jean Edward Smith.
What if President Biden failed to pass muster by the standards set by a truly disinterested panel of medical experts? That would be awful for the country and fatal for Biden’s chances in November.
On the other hand, success would clear a path to victory in November.
If, as the White House insists, Biden is just fine, the benefits far outweigh the risks, and if not, that’s too bad. It would then be time to move on to another Democratic nominee for president, as complicated and messy as that would be.
Of course, Trump, 77, would never submit himself to an impartial medical examination, as much as he needs to. The compare and contrast with Biden would be stark.
Richard Robbins lives in Uniontown. He can be reached at dick.l.robbins@gmail.com.