Two days ago, I was on a television binge until 4 a.m., engrossed entirely in “South Park.” Specifically, season seven. Seven is often considered the best of the series; if you have not watched it, I could not recommend it more. One of the most hysterical and memorable episodes that season was Gray Dawn, where South Park's elderly community launched an armed insurrection against the United States after a series of elder-induced accidents forced the State of Colorado to demand all seniors turn in their driver’s licenses.
Most of the episode is, in typical South Park fashion, pure mockery of the AARP as well, who often protest the idea of re-testing elderly drivers as age discrimination. But, while typically serving as a refreshing escape from reality, I found that South Park instead reminded me of our present political situation. If you watched yesterday's impromptu press briefing, you saw an 81-year-old man, who is the president of the United States and supposedly going to serve another four years, who went from one unhinged babble to another and confused Mexico and Egypt while boasting about how sharp his mind is. The truth is, like in South Park, President Joe Biden is an elderly driver refusing to turn over his keys, and the country is cruising towards one dramatic accident.
Let us alleviate ourselves of partisan proclivities. Whether you are a fervent liberal Democrat, an unwavering conservative, a progressive, or a government-weary libertarian, we should all come to a consensus. Joe Biden can neither remain president of the United States nor should he be reelected president of the United States. To do so would be nothing but elder abuse.
This week alone, Mr. Biden recalled talking to French president Mitterrand, who perished in 1996 - which, unless he has discovered the power of speaking to ghosts, we can assume is a slip of memory. Then, he also mentioned talking with German chancellor Helmut Koll, who has been dead since 2017 and hasn’t been in elected office since well before I was born. Two days ago, Mr. Biden confused Hamas with the House Republicans during a press conference about the Senate appropriations bill.
For years, Republicans, including former President Donald Trump, have been warning of Mr. Biden’s apparent cognitive decline. They have claimed that Mr. Biden is not in charge and that he is a ‘puppet’ for the Democratic political establishment that is ‘running the country.’ The fact that Mr. Biden has been invisible to the public eye does nothing to dissuade these concerns. He does the fewest television interviews of any president in the modern era, skipping the Super Bowl interview, which has been a longtime tradition, for the second straight year. But nothing, nothing, has been worse for Mr. Biden than the Special Counsel report pending from the investigation of his handling of classified documents.
Robert Hur, the special counsel, declined to bring criminal charges against the president because he believed that a jury conviction would be impossible. Mr. Hur's account predicted that the jury would acquit Mr. Biden because he is a “sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.” How did Mr. Hur arrive at such a conclusion? Read the details of his report; they should send shivers down your spine. Here’s an excerpt:
In his interview with our office, Mr. Biden’s memory was worse. He did not remember when he was vice president, forgetting on the first day of the interview when his term ended (“if it was 2013 – when did I stop being Vice President?”), and forgetting on the second day of the interview when his term began (“in 2009, am I still Vice President?”). He did not remember, even within several years, when his son Beau died. And his memory appeared hazy when describing the Afghanistan debate that was once so important to him. Among other things, he mistakenly said he “had a real difference” of opinion with General Karl Eikenberry, when, in fact, Eikenberry was an ally whom Mr. Biden cited approvingly in his Thanksgiving memo to President Obama.
His White House attempted to play defense, claiming that the report was the work of a sinister Republican prosecutor and nothing more than a political hit, analogous to James Comey in October of 2016. Of course, I would like to invite Attorney General Merrick Garland to release the transcript of the president's testimony, which undoubtedly was recorded. If Mr. Hur's account is false, let us see the president exonerated through a recording. I doubt it will ever see the light of day.
Now suddenly, the Democrats, fearful of polling that shows Mr. Biden behind Mr. Trump, and their allies in the mainstream media have taken a newfound interest in the idea Mr. Biden may be suffering from a cognitive decline. Nothing is more disgusting than the fact that people only seemed to take an interest after the president completely humiliated himself on the national stage. The idea that the media, his 'friends’, his party, and his family would subject him to this, knowing about his condition, disgusts me.
One cannot help but feel sad for the president. It's a tragic situation I know all too well. During the pandemic, we moved our grandparents into our house for their end-of-life care. I saw not only their physical health decline but their mental faculties as well. And from my experience, I can attest that when any elderly person is confronted about their memory problems, they get pissed. Mr. Biden snapped at a reporter who asked him to confirm the report that he was unaware of what year his son Beau died; his response was to insist he knew, take out a rosary, and then...
Nothing. He was unable to describe what church it came from. And he did not mention what year his son died after insisting he could.
Mr. Biden has been ineffective in his first term and is not up for a second. I would argue that most of Mr. Biden's disastrous policy has been influenced by this decline - his absence of mind mirrors our forgetful and absent-minded foreign policy strategy, his instability was taken advantage of by Vladimir Putin in his invasion of Ukraine, and his administration's tilt to the left is a clear sign that the president is not driving policy.
The idea of Mr. Biden doing anything but serving as a transitional president was ludicrous at the time of his election, and the idea of him remaining in the White House until he is 86 is equally delusional. Mr. Biden and his team even planned only to serve one term back in 2019, though maybe he has forgotten he once felt otherwise.
And although the palpable fear of Democrat panic spreads throughout Washington D.C., it is hard to see how they can avoid a Biden nomination. After all, who would replace him? Kamala? She polls worse than he, and frankly, her aptitude and speaking abilities are worse than Mr. Biden's - without the convenient excuse of age. And while the landline at Frankfort, Kentucky, will surely ring again and again, with pleas for Governor Andy Beshear to enter the race, it seems the Democrats have resigned themselves to their fate.
It's even more astonishing because dropping Mr. Biden is a no-brainer politically. He is arguably the most unpopular president of the last fifty years. The idea of Mr. Trump returning to the Oval Office is only made possible by the seeming equal resentment the populace has for Mr. Biden. Any generic Democrat not named Joe Biden would likely crush Mr. Trump in an election, but Democrats seemed reluctant to pull the trigger. One Biden staffer explained the problem: "Taking the nomination away from Biden is like taking the car keys away from your parents."
Sometimes, adults must make tough calls to wrestle the keys from their elderly parents. It doesn't come from not loving their parents but from the opposite. Democrats who care about Mr. Biden himself and our country must take the keys away from him because, like an elderly driver, there are incredible risks to not only himself but the country at large. Expect the pleas for Mr. Biden to bow out to dominate the airwaves his summer and prepare for the dread as he says no, refusing to resign himself to the political nursing home of irrelevance.