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My Memory is Fine
Posted at: Feb/14/2024 : Posted by: Mel
Related Category: Politics & Gov, Watching America,
If there is one thing we can depend on as American’s it is great quotes from our Presidents. “I am not a crook.” “There is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe.” “I did not have sexual relations with that woman.” (Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Bill Clinton respectively). A president denying reality is nothing new. Sometimes it’s a self-protective lie. Sometimes it’s a twisted string of words uttered from the brain of a tired leader. Sometimes it’s a contorted verbal formula to convince the rest of us that our perception of obvious truths is somehow false. It rarely works. The latest Presidential emanation is “My Memory is Fine” from Joe Biden. On each of these occasions, the incumbent president failed to convince anyone that their denial was valid. President Biden’s “My memory is fine” is on a clear path to join the other verbal protests as an exercise in futility. The never-ending denials by the White House and its allies of last week’s devastatingly description of the president as a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory“ by special counsel Robert Hur is proof that they know it’s true. All of us have seen the kid deny having spilled the milk while they were the only one who drinks milk. Mr. Hur’s approximately 350 page report on Biden’s handling of classified documents is now being called a “really shabby work product and completely out of bounds for a prosecutor” by Bob Bauer, the President’s personal lawyer. Hur, the special counsel said the investigation "uncovered evidence that President Biden willfully retained and disclosed classified materials." The phrase "uncovered evidence that" offers a limit on what the special counsel concluded. Concurrently, Mr. Hur recommended against pursuing prosecution because any jury would likely find Biden a sympathetic old man with failing memory. If his facilities are fine, he should be held accountable, if his facilities are failing, we should pity him and let him retire to a rocking chair somewhere. But you really can’t have it both ways. Mr. Biden joins the long list of presidents or presidential candidates flayed by a federally authorized criminal investigator. Richard Nixon probably deserved it; opinions will vary about whether Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump and Mr. Biden did. But whatever your politics, you might wonder whether this favored political trick has outlived its utility. But for political purposes, whether Mr. Hur took liberties with his brief by waxing about Mr. Biden’s mental faculties is immaterial. The president’s handlers by their clear behavior emphasize that they know it to be true as well as the general public watching on TV. Mr. Biden has held fewer press conferences and given fewer interviews than any president since Reagan. For the second year in a row, he skipped the traditional Super Bowl interview, which is usually softball questions tailored to a non-political audience. In an election year why would the president turn down access to a captive audience of 100 million Americans? The leader of the free world is a fragile creature, wrapped in tailored wool suits and protected by aides and secret service. They seldom do anything that is not well scripted. Clearly, Biden has banged his head publically getting in and out of Marine-1 and AirForce-1, but Gerald Ford still puts all the other pratfalls to shame. Nevertheless, President Trump likely has earned the record for off the cuff remarks that would have been better not said. But Trump did make himself available while Biden has been cocooned to minimize the risk of saying or doing something he can’t control. We like to believe that special investigators and special prosecutors are impartial, but they are in truth part of the “weaponization of Justice.” Even when a special counsel or investigator finds no case for prosecution, they still leave a trail of wreckage. Consider James Comey’s impact with Mrs. Clinton, Robert Mueller with Mr. Trump, or Mr. Hur with Mr. Biden, they still find a way to inflict potentially ruinous damage even if only sharing observations. It is an inescapable feature of reality denial that once you’ve started, you can’t stop. Clearly Mr. Biden is not able to remember all the names of foreign leaders dead or alive, or put them in the right country or continent. Regardless, like everyone who has ever run for office he still thinks he is the right man for the job. People with dementia normally don't know they have it; a loved one or authority needs to intervene; but no one is doing that for old Joe because the Democrat Party uses him like a puppet & fall guy. Someone else who was not elected as president is making the decisions, writing the speeches, creating cue cards and ultimately drafting policy. It is a shame that when President Biden is pressed, he can't even remember when or where his son Beau died. But like most dementia patients he gets upset when pressed on this failing. This situation highlights a bigger challenge the Democratic Party is facing. If they admit Joe is no longer up to the task of being president that means Kamala Harris is next in line. Even Kamala’s own party knows she is a liability. What will they do even if he does step away? It’s already too late for a genuine primary contest. Ambitious would-be successors might relish the prospect of an open convention, but the risks of throwing open the contest to a fractious party, in Chicago of all places, must make serious Democrats cry. I do suspect that if it was an "open convention" the media would savor it like sharks in a feeding frenzy chomping at anything that moves. No, the reality is that Biden denial will have to continue for another nine months. And then, potentially four more years. In theory, If Biden’s "memory is fine" as he avows, then criminal charges for mishandling classified documents need to be preferred despite the fact that they will go nowhere. The failing memory was the foundation for the DOJ decision to not hold him accountable for his failures despite the findings of the special counsel. For the last 80-90 years American Presidents have been figures who projected their personal strength and the strength of the country they lead regardless of whether you agreed with their policies. It would be difficult to cite this same behavior in our current President. As for the impending election, we need only look at the 2020 race for precedent. Biden made very few campaign stops and mostly hid in his Delaware home periodically issuing a policy statement. For all we know the dementia may have already been manifesting, and his handlers were carefully scripting how often he could be viewed and assessed. Meanwhile, Trump vigorously attacked the campaign trail with never a shortage of things to say. He managed to inspire zealous followers and rabid haters. Regardless of the 2020 election outcome, Trump was clearly his own worst enemy and might do that again in 2024. In our modern era U.S. Presidents are people driven by, and capable of projecting ambition. As President Biden’s memory and other faculties fail him, he is clearly unable to project the confidence and ambition we have come to expect of Presidents. These are traits that are easy for some individuals to project, but difficult for handlers to portray through a figure head with a teleprompter. The late Senator John McCain use to say; “The only known cure for presidential ambition is embalming fluid.” It is a disturbing truth that we are closer than we have ever been to actually testing McCain’s proposition. There is a Chinese curse: “may you live in interesting times.” The ingredients of our current time include a President fading to dementia, no clear option in the succession chain, Trump running in opposition and, a weaponized judicial system. On the international front North Korea, Russia, China and our southern border all add to the chaos with more spice than most of us have a tolerance for. This may be the ultimate recipe for “Interesting Times.” Of course, if Biden’s memory is fine, and he can direct and project American strength and resilience…then let me get some popcorn so I am ready to watch this story unfold.
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