But because this is only the latest in a long line of his telling performances, the Democrats and the media look the other way. What would he have to do to convince them that he needs to exit the White House? Tap out Hail to the Chief with chopsticks on his teeth? Announce that his real name is Howdy Doody?
Apart from the actual damage his programs and policies have had on the country at home and abroad, it’s the prospective damage that makes it so dangerous to have someone as mentally feeble as president of the country.
Whatever one thinks of his support of Ukraine, his abandonment to the Taliban of billions of dollars in military equipment, or his refusal to do anything to stanch the flow into the country of illegal immigrants, it’s his underlying mental condition that poses the greatest threat.
What guarantees that he might not one day seek to arrest, as “terrorists,” Republican members of congress or Supreme Court justices? Or decide that “unwoke” American corporations should be nationalized? Or launch a military strike on North Korea?
It isn’t enough to know that he would face many obstacles in the execution of any of these things. The threat is in the reaction by others to even his contemplation of such ideas.
To offer a more likely scenario, assume that in the months ahead it is confirmed that Biden profited, while president and/or vice president, in the shady foreign business deals of his son, Hunter. Assume further that this confirmation happens after the Republicans take control of the house and senate in November.
What, then, ridden with senility, might Biden contemplate as a diversion from his looming impeachment?
There were many malign suggestions, absent any evidence of the sort Biden has provided, that Trump should be removed from office under the 25th amendment to the constitution. And to the surprise of no one that and other arguments were made in his impeachment hearings in 2019 and 2020.
One suspects now that the idea of applying this amendment to Biden has already dawned on house and senate members, including a few Democrats, but the stopper has been that this would necessarily mean that Kamala Harris would become president.
But however raffish and unliked Kamala and her politics may be, she seems “razor sharp” compared to Biden and if, as looks likely, the Republicans sweep the November elections, the guess here is that Kamala would become vastly less “progressive” thereafter.
Just as it’s a mistake to let the perfect be the enemy of the good, things have become too dangerous to permit Biden to stay in office only because it’s assumed Kamala would be worse.
Patrick Maines, formerly head of a Washington think tank, writes about politics and the media.