For months leading up to last Thursday’s debate, President Biden’s campaign team, along with his surrogates in the Democratic Party, kept peddling the same message: that they had seen him operate behind closed doors and they could confidently tell voters that he was in top mental shape. They wanted us to believe that he was so sharp that he could teach a master’s class in quantum physics while on a break from solving quadratic equations.
They asked us to believe them and not the images of Joe Biden we saw on the news — the ones that showed a frail president who often seemed lost. And when “60 Minutes” correspondent Scott Pelley asked Biden what he would tell critics who say that because of his age he’s “unfit for the job,” Biden smiled and simply said, “Watch me.”
Well, more than 50 million Americans did watch, and now we know what many of us had long suspected — that Biden’s allies were misleading the American people about the president’s mental acuity; that they put his (and their) political interests above the interests of the country.
Biden’s team had a plan — to keep him under wraps for as long as possible. That’s why he didn’t do the traditional pre–Super Bowl interview. It’s why he rarely answers reporters’ questions. It’s why he reads from note cards instead of speaking spontaneously.
It’s also why the Biden White House and Justice Department refused to release the audio recording of the interview he did with Special Prosecutor Robert Hur. They knew that what was on that recording would reveal a president with a bad memory who had trouble getting a point across — and they didn’t want the public to hear what they heard.
They needed the debate more than they actually wanted it. It was all part of the plan to dispel talk that the president was too old and too frail to serve four more years. But now his age and mental fitness are all anybody is talking about. They rolled the dice hoping their plan would work. They should have taken Mike Tyson’s famous line to heart: “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.”
And now a lot of those punches are coming from, of all places, his friends in the media. The New York Times editorial page said Biden should drop out for the sake of the country. Times columnist Tom Friedman, who says Biden is a close friend, wrote that the debate was one of the most “heartbreaking” events he’s witnessed in American politics. “Joe Biden, a good man and a good president, has no business running for re-election,” he wrote.
The Washington Post wrote that Biden should take time and at least consider dropping out. Post columnist David Ignatius, a long-time admirer of the Biden presidency, wrote that the debate solidified what became “obvious nearly a year ago that President Biden shouldn’t run for a second term.”
A bunch of other prominent liberal journalists joined the “Joe must go” chorus. For much of his presidency, they showed little curiosity about Biden’s mental fitness for office. They acted as his Praetorian Guard.
And when the Wall Street Journal last month ran a story about how, behind closed doors, Biden was showing signs of slipping, that he often forgot details about his own policies, Biden’s friends accused the Journal of relying on Republican sources to wage a partisan war against the president.
Journalists knew that Franklin D. Roosevelt had serious physical liabilities, but they kept his paralysis from the public. Journalists knew about John F. Kennedy’s sexual liaisons, including one with a woman linked to the head of the Chicago mafia. They kept those secrets from the public, too. But FDR and JFK were able to function; they were mentally sharp. Biden isn’t.
A CBS News poll taken after the debate found that only 27 percent of registered voters said they believe Biden has the mental health to serve four more years — 72 percent said he didn’t. 72 percent also said he should not run for a second term — and that includes 46 percent of Democrats.
Biden’s loyal fan base likes to say that the president simply had a bad night last Thursday. But what we all witnessed was much more than a bad night. What we saw was evidence of a president in decline. We watched his deterioration — no matter how hard his supporters want us to believe them and not what we actually saw on live TV.
In February 1968, at the height of the Vietnam War, Walter Cronkite left his CBS News anchor desk and went to Vietnam to see for himself what was going on. His commentary on the war was devastating, prompting President Lyndon B. Johnson to conclude that, “If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost Middle America.” One month later, Johnson went on national television to say he would not run for reelection.
So, will Joe Biden conclude that if he lost the New York Times, he, like LBJ, lost the country? Will he say he won’t run for reelection?
We’ll know soon enough. But never underestimate the power of a politician’s ego. As of now, Biden appears to be putting his own his selfish political interests over those of the country. Let’s see if that lasts.
Bernard Goldberg is an Emmy-winning and Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University award-winning writer and journalist. He is the author of five books and publishes exclusive weekly columns, audio commentaries and Q&As on his Substack page.