Dick Hubert’s Worldview: Joe Biden was a wonderful President; sadly, he’s not up to the job anymore
July 3, 2024 at 10:37 p.m.
So, how are you feeling since the end of the Biden-Trump debate on June 27?
For everyone who fears Donald Trump’s potential return to the Presidency, “fear, frantic, depressed, terrified” are some of the adjectives flying around.
For the Trumpers among our readership and in this area, you’re probably feeling thrilled.
This column is for the terrified, which, as regular readers would more than expect, includes me.
I can’t imagine what would change our state of mind between the time I’m writing this and the time you’re reading it except Biden’s announcing he won’t run for re-election and throwing open the Democratic convention to name a new Presidential–Vice Presidential team.
At least on that score I can count myself among the vast majority of the leadership (at this moment) of what in our lifetime has constituted the free world.
The London, England based The Economist, which I have quoted often in the past, has as its lead editorial “After the Debate/Joe Biden should give way to an alternative candidate: his last and greatest political act would help rescue America from an emergency.”
Few of you subscribe to The Economist.
More of you have seen the pleadings for Biden to give way to another candidate from the editorial board of the New York Times, the Washington Post, columnists like Thomas Friedman and Maureen Dowd of the New York Times, the Conservative but anti-Trump columnist Andrew Sullivan, MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough, The Atlantic, The New Yorker, New York Magazine, Vanity Fair, the Los Angeles Times, and the list goes on and on.
The Economist has its say
But you should have the opportunity to read what The Economist has to say, because their readership is global, includes the leadership community of all of our allies in Europe, the Mideast, Asia, and Latin America, and reflects my views as well, but far more elegantly.
As they write:
“In November 2022 The Economist said that, after a lifetime of public service, Joe Biden should not seek re-election as president. In January this year we put our concerns on the cover. But even those worried about his age were not prepared for Thursday’s debate against Donald Trump. Over 90 agonising minutes, Mr. Biden was befuddled and incoherent—too infirm, frankly, to cope with another four years in the world’s hardest job.
Mr. Biden says he is standing again to help ordinary Americans and to save democracy from Mr. Trump’s vengeful demagoguery. And the former president’s scowling, evasive and truth-defying appearance on the debate stage did nothing to diminish the urgency of those two aims. Yet if Mr. Biden really cares about his mission, then his last and greatest public service should be to stand aside for another Democratic nominee.
(The Economist’s list of the Democrats’ “deep bench of talent” includes Governors Andy Beshear of Kentucky, Gavin Newsom of California, Jared Polis of Colorado, J.B. Pritzker of Illinois, Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan; Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg, Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo, Georgia’s Senator Raphael Warnock, and finally, Vice President Kamala Harris.)
There are a lot of arguments for resisting such a drastic step, but the main one is that the election is barely four months away. That may be enough time for Mr. Biden to recover in the polls. But with the Democratic convention in August, it would be too brief for the party to find another candidate who could campaign and win. Replacing him could divide Democrats at a time when they need to stay united. Those assertions may have been convincing once. Not anymore.
Mr. Biden’s chances of winning in November have taken a savage knock. His team sought to debate Mr. Trump because their man was trailing. Our forecast model has consistently given him a chance of victory of roughly one in three—worrying, but not hopeless. His staff had been limiting his exposure to interviews, even as they insisted that in private he remains sharp, vigorous and in total control.
To the shame of the White House and congressional Democrats, that assertion has now been exposed as a falsehood. The Republicans have long said that Mr. Biden’s powers are fading. The debate was his great chance to prove them wrong. Alas, in front of many millions of people, he did not just fail to rebut his opponents, he presented irrefutable evidence to back them up.
Mr. Biden will struggle to undo the damage. If, as is likely, Mr. Trump declines to take part in a second debate in September—what has he got to lose?—the sitting president may never again have such a good opportunity to change voters’ minds. Nobody can speak on his behalf. Only a blitz of interviews and rallies could begin to blunt the distressing impression he created. You have only to say it to know that it will not happen.
Furthermore, even if Mr. Biden were somehow to win in November, there are doubts that he could govern as he should over a full four-year term. Certainly, he now looks as if he will be less able to fulfil his self-appointed duty as democracy’s champion. He will struggle to master the many issues that will confront the next occupant of the Oval Office, whoever it is. He will have staff, obviously, but as a bewildered figurehead led by his unelected minions, he will erode Americans’ faith in their system of government, not restore it.
For many voters (albeit fewer than before the debate), Mr. Biden may still be preferable to the alternative. Two men on that stage were unfit to be president, but only one of them was morally unfit. Given the threat Mr. Trump poses to decency and democracy, it is reckless to entrust a man as frail as Mr. Biden with the task of keeping him out of the Oval Office. Is there time for Mr. Biden to give way to a better candidate?
That depends on the man himself. Because he has already won the Democratic primary, only he can choose to stand aside. Perhaps he can be persuaded by his wife, Jill, that doing so would best cement his legacy. Party grandees, including Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, should beseech her to do so. They have every reason to. The danger—the likelihood even—is not just of Mr. Trump retaking the White House but of unified maga control of the White House and Congress, with a sympathetic Supreme Court. In the face of his very public failure, Mr. Biden’s bullheaded refusal to step aside for the good of his party and his country would undermine the claim that his candidacy is an act of selfless, high-minded sacrifice.”
There’s more…but The Economist’s summation paragraph is worth memorizing, quoting, posting, and sharing:
“Thursday’s debate was designed to answer the question of whether Mr. Biden was fit to be president—and in this it succeeded. It has brought clarity to a race that currently offers Americans a choice between two candidates they do not want. Mr. Biden and his party have been given the chance to avoid a dire fate for their country and the world. They should seize it.”
Who else has a stake
in Biden’s opting out, or should
Put yourself in the mind of Ukraine’s President Zelenskyy, fighting a brutal war, needing every weapons system, bullet, artillery shell, and soldier his country can muster to stop the Russian invasion, you’ve watched the debate, and you are faced with the prospect of Donald Trump returning to the Presidency.
You know Russia’s Putin is cheering Trump on, as well as Putin’s friends and military backers in North Korea, China, and Iran. You know Trump wants to make a deal with Putin that puts not only your country at risk of dismemberment, but also your neighboring NATO and European Union allies in Europe as well.
How would you feel right now? Afraid to speak out one way or the other?
Now, with Ukraine in your mind, let alone your vision from the debate of what Trump wants to do in this country, and the lies he told that are helping to poison our national dialogue and identity, how are our elected Democratic representatives at the local level reacting?
At this writing, only State Senator Shelley Mayer has answered my requests for comment on Biden’s debate performance.
She e-mailed me this past Sunday afternoon:
"Of course I was deeply disappointed in the President's performance during the debate Thursday night. One night's poor debate, however, does not undo many years of true leadership, high ethical standards and profound decency that characterize President Biden's service to our nation. Unfortunately, as he has before, the former President lied, exaggerated and offended - and sadly his untruths were left unchallenged. I stand strongly by President Biden as he assesses how to move ahead, but I will not let this debate define the success of his presidency and his leadership."
For me, the question is not how President Biden’s presidency has performed so far. The real worry is: what can we expect from President Biden in the future?
Bret Stephens in the New York Times said it best:
“…the transparent problem with the president’s performance wasn’t that he debated poorly. It’s that he is suffering from serious cognitive decline, something from which there is no coming back. I don’t say this as a medical expert, only as one of many millions of people who have witnessed, in elderly people we love, the same symptoms we saw in Biden on Thursday: the garbled thoughts and slurred words and unfinished sentences; the vacant stare; the confusion.
As a human matter, this is heartbreaking. As a political one, it’s disqualifying.”
So, who will have this frank talk with Biden that it’s time to retire with pride and selflessness.
It would seem it is up to Jill Biden, his wife and nearest and dearest protector, to say in the kindest but firmest way, “Joe, it’s time for another fellow Democrat to carry the burden. It’s time to go home.”
Dick Hubert, a retired television news producer-writer-reporter living in Rye Brook, has been honored with the Peabody Award, the DuPont Columbia Award and the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Journalism Award.
Editor’s Note: This column, written by Dick Hubert, represents his opinion and not that of this newspaper.
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