Biden must debate Trump, today!
Joe Biden ought to challenge Donald Trump to a debate.
That would be the way for Biden, 81, to deal with the increasingly accepted observation that he is in cognitive decline and is too old to be president.
“Take a look at the other guy,” Biden said in his softball interview with Seth Meyers on NBC Monday, “he’s about as old as I am.”
Which is true. The other guy, Donald Trump, is 77. But people age differently and the difference between the two presidents is that Trump is an obviously a young 77 while Biden is demonstrably an old 81.
Biden’s age has become a front-burner issue following the investigation into his handling, or mishandling, of classified documents.
Special Counsel Robert Hur of the U. S. Justice Department reported that Biden was “a sympathetic, well-meaning elderly man with a poor memory.”
So, an aggressive debate challenge from Biden would impress people concerned about his mental and physical capability to serve a second term, let alone face off with Trump one-on-one. It would turn things around.
Trump has already said he is willing to debate Biden immediately “for the good of the country.” Biden so far has been noncommittal.
Policy issues aside, most Americans now believe that Joe Biden is too old for the job. He walks like a robot, stumbles frequently, forgets where he is, forgets names, talks about dead world leaders as though they were alive and mangles the English language when he meanders or goes off script.
People forget, or do not even know, that Joe Biden underwent two brain aneurysm surgeries 36 years ago when he was a U.S. senator. A brain aneurysm is a condition where there is a rupture of an artery that supplies blood to the brain.
The first operation on the left side of the brain, in which surgeons attached a metal clip around the aneurysm, took place at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in February after Biden dropped out of the 1988 Democrat primary race for president.
The second brain surgery three months later, like the first, was on the right side of Biden’s brain. Like the first operation, surgeons placed a metal clip to pinch the walls of the artery supplying blood to the brain.
Biden was 45 years old at the time. While Biden survived both operations with no apparent lasting effects, it is entirely unknown what impact the operations might have had as Biden aged or are having now.
Old once-healed traumas tend to return as time goes by.
Biden, in his 2020 defeat of Trump, was able to campaign from the basement in his Delaware home. Protected and supported by the sympathetic, left-wing media, Biden’s brain surgeries never became a campaign issue.
This is not to say that they are influencing his behavior now. But they might be. The American people can see that he is faltering.
Granted, a debate would be a huge gamble for Biden. But as he continues to plummet in the polls on every major issue facing the country, it may be something he can boldly propose to show the country and the world that he is fit to command.
He has to do something to turn things around because the ranks of Democrats supporting him on the age issue are thinning.
For every Democrat like California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a president in waiting, who sees Biden’s age as “an asset,” there is a Rep.-elect Tom Suozzi of New York who believes that Biden is just too old.
Newsom, the west coast fop with the mop (of hair) sounds a lot like Jill Biden, the president’s wife, who said that Biden does “more in an hour than most people do in a day.”
That may be true. But people do not see it, and they know what they see, and what they see is a tired and confused old man in the White House
Democrats defending Biden on the age issue are the same Democrats who have told us that the southern border was secure when people can see hordes of illegally immigrants crossing into the country daily.
Who are you going to believe, the Democrats or your lying eyes?
Peter Lucas is a veteran Massachusetts political reporter. Email him at: peter.lucas@bostonherald.com