Four years into his term, Joe Biden has scored major legislative victories with a slim majority in the Senate. He has presided over a masterful rollout of the COVID-19 vaccine that quickly saved hundreds of thousands of lives, and he has invested billions of dollars to preserve an independent Ukraine, thwarting Russia's revanchist dreams. America's main rival, China, is significantly weaker than when he took office. The U.S. economy is significantly stronger. The sum of the accomplishments is enough that historians may one day be tempted to declare Biden an underrated president.
But this revisionism will never be convincing. Like previous presidents, Biden has clearly laid out the criteria by which his performance will be judged. From the moment he began running for office, he cast himself as a champion of democracy in the republic's most dangerous hour. Fighting dictatorships was the explicit rationale for his foreign policy, and the same ethos woven into his domestic agenda. He said he designed the legislative package as a demonstration project to show "our democracy can still do great things."
When Biden issues public warnings about the fragility of the system, he tends to studiously avoid mentioning Donald Trump's name, but the implications are clear enough. The inability to avoid Trump’s reelection, and the strain it would inevitably put on democracy, would be the worst disaster of them all. By doggedly launching his re-election campaign, by tying his party to his shuffle frame, he is dooming the country to achieve the nightmare scenario he promised to prevent. He created ideal conditions for Trump’s return and his own crushing defeat.
Joseph Robinette Biden Jr.'s obituary will be haunted by counterfactuals: What if he hadn't made the selfish decision to run for re-election? What if he had passed the torch a year or even six months earlier? This is a cruel parlor game.
The way events unfolded — his disastrous debate performance, and the clear awareness across the country of his geriatric state — was mind-boggling. Why didn’t Democrats intervene earlier? Why didn't his aides stop him from running? Biden's re-election campaign is based on the absurd premise that the nation is justified in trusting a president who will end his term at age 86, inviting conspiracy theory explanations.
In an age of conspiracy, these theories would gain widespread acceptance. They suggest a widespread cover-up orchestrated by aides dedicated to protecting their power. In this imagined scenario, as Biden wanders aimlessly around the White House in a near-dementia state, unable to perform the basic functions of the presidency, his inner circle suppresses evidence of his rottenness, as does a group of Democratic politicians and They were abetted by a conspiracy of corrupt journalists.
But turning it into a story about an evil elite both exaggerates and downplays the scandal. It exaggerates by baselessly suggesting that Biden’s age prevents him from fulfilling his constitutional duties. It downplayed the scandal as his advisers and protectors committed one of the biggest common-sense lapses in political history. There is no way a cabal bent on preserving their own power could make such a tragically self-defeating mistake.
When Biden took office, I chronicled his first two years in a book about his White House. You don't have to be Bob Woodward to recognize that the president is an old man. I've heard stories about him being unable to come up with names; he confused current Virginia Senator Mark Warner with the late Virginia Senator John Warner. In conversation, his anecdotes lead to painful dead ends. His schedule did not start until the early hours of the morning, which showed that he was lacking in stamina.
I also interviewed hundreds of aides and politicians who have spent a lot of time with Biden. When I looked at his management style, I found no evidence that a president was catatonic. I heard stories about his bad temper, how he would lash out at aides who failed to give him the information he wanted, how he would get angry at experts who belittled him. As his advisor said, he would micromanage them, sometimes unproductively, and overprepare for meetings—a product of his deep insecurities.
Aides and lawmakers almost always note his age. Many times, they do so with admiration. One of the great things about an old president is experience, and the wisdom that comes with it. During his most impressive period in office, he drew on his long history of working in the Senate and traveling to foreign capitals. He does not need on-the-job training. His closest political confidants, most of whom have worked with him for decades, view Biden as a father figure, which means they face a very human problem: difficulty judging the decline of an aging parent.
Decline is a matter of perceptions, and those perceptions are sometimes tainted by wishful thinking, by the hope that parents will still have some cheer. (Now that Biden is a political failure, insiders will be eager to say publicly that they see evidence of his decline before the rest of us.)
Perception is also tainted by a lifetime of memories. Everyone has their own weaknesses, which tend to become more severe with age but remain consistent with familiar patterns. So as Biden immerses himself in the story, it's okay to say: That's just Uncle Joe, always reminiscing about the good old days, always a little wordy. When he stumbles over words, well, that's his childhood stutter.
There's no question that Biden's aging has accelerated over the past four years because that's what happened in the White House. When members of the administration left the West Wing, it was as if they had been subjected to a biological experiment that wrinkled their skin and turned their hair gray, compressing 20 years of biological deterioration into four years. If Biden's body can resist these changes, he will become a supernatural being. He endured the stress of managing multiple wars and the loss of a presidential campaign, albeit a stalemate one.
That being said, I've never seen any evidence that he made bad decisions because of his age. I've never seen any evidence that his aides actually determined policy without his consent. At worst, his flagging energy undermines his credibility as a leader and exposes weaknesses to rivals at home and abroad, although these cautious tendencies arguably predate his decline.
However, there is no need to look for hidden scandals because the visible scandals are scary enough. Democrats ignored a series of warning signs. The evidence that Biden is unfit for re-election is evident in his public appearances and the ones he studiously avoids. Advisers knew that Biden's instinct was always to be confident in his abilities, but they never made a concerted effort to block his decision to run until it was too late. Donald Trump is their legacy, too.