The two gnarly old men had been asked about the ballooning cost of child care, a nightmare for many young parents. In response, they bragged about their amateur golf games.
It was all awful, But if there was any moment that crystallized Thursday night’s presidential debate — showed that this has all gone too far and gave succor to this nation’s antagonists, laughing away in Moscow, Tehran and Pyongyang — here was that moment.
CNN had the chyron on the screen with the question asking something that mattered to many. All these two kvetching men could do was talk about their handicaps, and not the ones that were all too obvious.
“I’ve seen his swing. I know your swing,” snarled Donald Trump even as President Joe Biden, a man asking to be the one in charge of the nuclear codes for the next four years, looked capable of swinging nothing significant outside his own body.
Send in the clowns. Don’t bother; they’re here.
Unpacking precisely what happened Thursday, and why it happened, will take America some time. The insta-pundits are now just an echo chamber. Americans don’t need partisan analyses of something they saw with their own eyes.
Trump was mostly just himself, energetically narcissistic, cavalier with truths, cruel of tone, bereft of empathy.
Biden was an encapsulation of what many Americans have come to know very well as they care for aged parents, partners, friends, grandparents and colleagues: A man now struggling to maintain a line of thought and keep track of complex facts, a man who gets flustered under deadline pressure, a man who has become vulnerable and yet, at the same time, far less self-aware.
None of these descriptions of Biden prevent his enjoying a great life fully deserved by a man of distinguished public service; they don’t preclude his passing on wisdom in a classroom, giving speeches, accepting awards, shaping a memoir with a co-writer, having dinner with old friends and colleagues, playing with grandkids. A charitable person would say, maybe, they don’t even preclude his living out the last few months of a first term as president of the United States. With the help of trusted staffers.
But standing again for that office? It’s a ridiculous idea. Everyone sees that now. Everyone sees that the Democratic Party, which effectively closed down the primaries, and the White House, which painted a picture of fictional cognitive vitality, have been covering up a reality that they must have seen but clearly wished were otherwise. Everyone knows that media partisans, with some courageous exceptions, have done much the same.
A case could be made that Trump was responsible for all this; such was the Democratic hatred of the populist and yet reckless former president that a new candidate presented an unacceptable level of risk, whatever the evident political skills of a Gavin Newsom or a Gretchen Whitmer or a J.B. Pritzker. Those ambitious governors themselves followed the usual playbook of loyal defender: Newsom on Thursday night would say only that he had Biden’s back.
Why? After that?
By all means, defend the honor and service of the man. But to pretend he is the party’s best choice for four more years? For a party that loves to accuse Republicans of mendacity, it’s pretty rich.
Perhaps the covert Democratic plan for an early debate actually was not so much to shore up Biden’s poll numbers, as was said for public consumption, but to test Biden’s abilities under the klieg lights while there still was time to make a change before the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, assuming enough of them believe there still is time.
If so, Biden failed the test. And now Democrats have a big problem to solve before they come to this city for a convention that they’ve been desperately trying to script as precisely as possible but that is shaping up to be considerably more dramatic than anticipated.
Democrats have been worrying more about disruptive protesters than the clear limitations of their leading man. Now that won’t wash, and that’s why panic is in the air.
The Biden drama is underway, and it will no doubt be to Trump’s benefit, making his vice presidential pick all the more definitional and crucial. As we write, we don’t know what will happen. But it is our job to say what we think in the here and now.
Biden, if we’ve not made that clear, should announce that he will be a single-term president who now has seen the light when it comes to his own capabilities in the face of the singular demands of being the president of the United States. He can do so with honor, but he is the only person who can do so. Certainly, his family can help. But, again, he is the only one.
The paradox here is that the limitations of age that Biden now faces likely are what’s also preventing him from making that choice. It’s hard for any of us to leave the stage, especially one we love, and it takes courage and a level of self-awareness that becomes more elusive as we fight the ageism in the world, the ruthless ambitions of youthful competitors, the devaluing of our experience and hard-fought wisdom.
But, President Biden, jobs rarely love you back. There is life thereafter. And, in this case, it has to be done. As we all saw.
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