How bad was Biden’s Thursday? Awful.
That’s true however you spin the special counsel’s report on the president’s handling of classified documents
How rough was special counsel Robert K. Hur’s report on Joe Biden’s handling of classified documents, released Thursday afternoon? It first seemed to depend on your newspaper of choice.
“Biden Cleared in Documents Case; Report Raises Concerns About His Memory,” read the headline in The New York Times, leading with what Democrats desperately hoped the main takeaway would be.
“Biden Knowingly Kept and Shared Classified Material, Special Counsel Concludes,” read the contemporaneous story in The Wall Street Journal, foregrounding exactly the opposite.
Both papers pivoted in what we call subheads in the newspaper business, with the Times duly noting (in smaller type) how the report found that Biden “had willfully retained material after finishing his term as vice president and had shared sensitive information with a ghostwriter” and the Journal allowing (also in smaller type) that “the president won’t face criminal charges.”
There’s a stark reminder for you of how everything involved in that bombshell report, and Biden’s fitness for a second term, is being seen through a partisan media lens.
What is the reasonable American, our favorite kind of reader, to make of all of this?
More specifically, how should the country process Hur’s sly statement that he had decided not to press charges against the president (even after he leavs office) not because there was no case to make in terms of his keeping classified materials in his garage, but because Hur and his staff thought that any jury would likely see Biden “as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory” and thus decline to convict?
For admirers of thinly veiled political hardball, of brutally effective statements doused in deceptive sugar, Hur delivered a rhetorical masterpiece for the ages. With patronizing blather as camouflage, Hur managed to do more political damage to Biden than if he had actually decided to press charges on those classified documents in his garage. No wonder the White House was seething.
Reasonable Americans don’t see Biden as a malicious or nefarious man because he’s not. But they do see him as having some worrying cognitive issues because, well, that’s clear to everyone except perhaps the president himself. Even in the one news conference of his career where it was crucially important not to confuse one political leader or country for another, Biden was unable to pull that off. For those of us who have had difficult conversations with angry, elderly parents over driving or living circumstances, it was especially painful to watch.
But in our view, Biden’s memory issue, as it pertains to his fitness for another term as president of the United States, is a matter for the Democratic Party, which must nominate a candidate in Chicago this summer, and ultimately, assuming Biden indeed is the nominee, for voters in the fall. Using their best judgment and weighing all alternatives. Period.
Hur is not qualified to offer a medical opinion, and it was outside of his remit to do so. We smell a rat in how he weaseled that criticism into his report by using it as a justification for non-prosecution. This was as disingenuous as it was inappropriate. But, of course, the horse has bolted out of the barn now and Democrats cannot close the door.
That said, the report raised legitimate and troubling concerns about Biden’s careless and self-serving handling of those classified documents.
We were not fond of how Biden blamed staffers at his hastily arranged news conference. We think there is palpable hypocrisy in how Democrats amplified, and crowed about, Donald Trump’s trove of classified material sitting around at Mar-a-Lago when Biden clearly was doing much the same thing a few hundred miles to the north.
Sure, Biden cooperated with the special counsel whereas Trump huffed and puffed and obfuscated and obstructed, which is a material difference here. But that’s analogous to whether or not you cooperated with a police officer who pulled you over for speeding. It’s a good idea to do so, and will be taken into account, but it doesn’t mean you are innocent of the offense.
Biden and Trump are far from the only presidents and vice presidents to walk off with government property. Why does this happen? Some of the reasons are systemic in that administrations vacate the White House rapidly and boxes of classified matter get lost and confused in the swirl of emotional goodbyes and out-the-door staffers sending out resumes. The boss hardly is immune.
We’d wager most of our readers have boxes of which they do not know the contents. We know we do.
But there’s also ample evidence that these powerful men (and they all have been men) want to guard their secrets and, just as importantly, control their own post-presidential narratives, including having exclusive raw material at hand for sympathetic-to-them books. The evidence shows Biden certainly did.
As with so many government employees at all levels, transparency and the public ownership of official communications is a challenge for presidents and vice presidents, and there is an inherent clash of private and public interests. That has to stop; certainly, it should now be clear to future occupants of the Oval Office that classified documents don’t belong in anyone’s garage and that carting them off means paying a price.
How serious is this matter? We see it as relatively low on the scale of potential misdoings, which is why the headlines Friday were about Biden’s cognitive power, not his notebooks.
Clearly, Democrats have a problem with their nominee, which explains tweets like “Pritzker/ Whitmer ’24” showing up on Friday morning. The only solution is Biden vanquishing any and all doubts through his cognitive performance over the next few weeks. That won’t be easy for him. But only he can fix this situation.
We don’t doubt Gov. J.B. Pritzker made a few discreet calls to his Washington team Friday. He’d be a fool not to be prepared.
Clearly, Democrats have a problem with their nominee, which explains tweets like “Pritzker/ Whitmer ’24” showing up on Friday morning. The only solution is Biden vanquishing any and all doubts through his cognitive performance over the next few weeks. That won’t be easy for him. But only he can fix this situation.