We know President Biden rambles, and we’re long past the point where many people take what he says seriously. On December 28, the Washington Post reported that Biden and some of his aides still think he could have beaten Trump if he had stayed in the presidential race, and Biden repeated that assertion in an Oval Office interview with USA Today‘s Washington bureau chief Susan Page, conducted Sunday:
PAGE: Do you believe you could have won in November?
BIDEN: It’s presumptuous to say that, but I think yes, based on the polling that . . .
PAGE: Do you think you would’ve had the vigor to serve another four years in office?
BIDEN: I don’t know. That’s why I thought when I first announced, talking to Barack about it, I said I thought I was the person. I had no intention of running after Beau died — for real, not a joke. And then when Trump was running again for reelection, I really thought I had the best chance of beating him. But I also wasn’t looking to be president when I was 85 years old, 86 years old. And so I did talk about passing the baton. But I don’t know. Who the hell knows? So far, so good. But who knows what I’m going to be when I’m 86 years old?
As I wrote last week, perhaps the clearest sign that our octogenarian president is no longer of sound mind is that he thinks that after trailing throughout the year, he would have somehow magically bounced back from that disastrous debate performance — the one that he attributed to a cold and jet lag from a trip overseas twelve days earlier — and beaten Trump, when Kamala Harris, Tim Walz, and $2 billion in spending couldn’t even win one of the seven swing states. Apparently, at the last minute, the country was going to be overcome with a yearning for a commander in chief that reminded them of Jeff Dunham’s “Walter” puppet.
But it’s the latter comment that is particularly eye-opening. “I also wasn’t looking to be president when I was 85 years old, 86 years old.” Er, when you were almost 82 and running for another four-year term, yes, you were! Biden never mentioned any intention to end his second term early or to step down around the 2026 midterms. It’s fair to wonder whether Joe Biden remembers how old he is; he turned 82 on November 20. It’s also fairly galling to have read the Wall Street Journal‘s account of how the White House staff attempted to work around our octogenarian president’s infirmities and effects of age and then to hear Biden blithely insist, “So far, so good.” No! So far, not good!