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Danish TV2News Writes:

ANALYSIS: We have to talk about Joe Biden

As an analyst, you shouldn't make remote diagnoses, but you can't ignore the obvious: The ravages of time are eating away at the world's most powerful man.

Let's start with the conclusion:

I'm not going to make remote diagnoses about Joe Biden's alleged or possible mental state. That would be frivolous. But that doesn't mean that analysts can refrain from stating the obvious:

We have to talk about Joe Biden.

Yesterday's seance, in which the 79-year-old Biden asked during a White House conference where the late Congressman Jackie Walorski was among the audience, obviously cannot be ignored.

- Jackie, are you here? Where's Jackie? She's obviously not here," the US President said of Walorski, who died on 3 August this year.

- I thought she would be here to help make this a reality, continued the world's most powerful man. I wonder if the Walorskis would have wanted the same thing, but she was tragically killed in a car accident just two months ago.

Comic Ali's cousin
It was not helped by the fact that White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, at a subsequent press briefing, kept replying that the president had had Walorski "in mind" and, moreover, affectation that the president was confused.

With a twinkle in one's eye, one can of course note that Comic Ali has got a cousin. After all, anyone and everyone can see from the viral video clips that Biden not only had Walorski on his mind, but repeatedly inquired as to the late congressman's whereabouts.

Or, as one member of the press corps so eloquently replied to the press secretary, "I think about John Lennon almost every day, but I'm not looking for him."

Aging
The concern of the American public has long been there. Biden has made himself significantly less available to the press and spoken significantly less to the nation than his predecessors, even though we live in tumultuous times with plenty to talk about.

A poll in late February showed that a majority of Americans do not believe Biden "has the mental acuity to be an effective president". Last month, 59 percent of respondents also said they were "concerned" about Biden's mental health. Concerns about Biden's age are also slowly being voiced in quotes by fellow partisans. Democratic voters keep saying in polls that they don't want Biden to run again in 2024.

In order to navigate this minefield analytically, I myself prefer the formulation that Biden is ageist. It's a more neutral and less loaded term, though it may not be accurate.

Stories
I was at a voter rally with Joe Biden in Nevada in February 2020. Here Biden came on stage and began by saying he was glad to be in California. Potatos, potatoes.

Tales like this have been many in Biden's long career in American politics. Often, the statements are explained away or affectation is that Biden stuttered as a child, or "that's the way Joe Biden has always been."

That may be true. But it is also undeniably the case that these slanders have increased over the years. That said, yesterday's episode obviously can't be categorized as just another slander.

An impossible task
At the same time, of course, it is easy to understand that the White House press secretary has an impossible task. If she finds out the obvious, she will be bombarded with questions about Biden's mental state. If she steps into the role of Comic Ali's cousin - as she did - she is laughed at, and no one buys her excuses.

I have to be honest and admit that it's hard as an analyst, too. It was, by the way - just in a different way - when Donald Trump sat in the White House and behaved - diplomatically put - unusually.

On the one hand, one has to be careful not to be hitched to a party political bandwagon and pass on spin and propaganda. It didn't get any easier, to say the least, after Donald Trump and the Republicans began attacking Biden's mental health, making claims about alleged dementia and that Biden should be out the window.

On the other hand, you have to itemize what everyone can see and hear and put it into a larger analytical context. Especially in such a tense situation as the world is currently in, and when the 79-year-old Biden continues to express his intention to run for re-election in the upcoming presidential elections in 2024.

But here we are back at the beginning: that as an analyst, in my world, one must refrain from making remote diagnoses, while at the same time having to italicize that the ravages of time are clearly gnawing at the world's most powerful man.


Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

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