Commentary
It was back in the 19th century that Oscar Wilde scandalized much of Britain by deeming homosexuality “the love that dares not speaks its name.” These days, that might be said of heterosexuality.
But kidding (or not kidding) aside, over generations some things become spoken that were never discussed before. This is largely, although not always, a good thing.
One subject that was for the most part off limits until recently was the mental fitness of a president, especially in the seriously clinical/psychological sense. People have been calling their political opponents “idiots,” “morons,” and such from time immemorial, but it took the arrival of Donald Trump for his opponents to demand “scientific proof” of a president’s competence.
Trump actually complied, apparently easily passing the Montreal Cognitive Assessment, an Alzheimer’s and dementia test, according to his then-doctor Ronny Jackson, now a Republican congressman from Texas. (Trump scored 30 out of 30.)
When asked to take a similar examination, Biden demurred.
Nevertheless, a recent Politico/Morning Consult poll (pdf) showed a staggering 49 percent disagreeing with the statement “Biden is mentally fit.”
Although few could match Wilde’s eloquence, in the grand tradition of Oscar, Newsmax’s James Rosen dared to bring this poll up at Wednesday’s news conference.
“Not even a majority of Democrats affirmed that statement,” Rosen told Biden, who immediately interrupted with “I’ll let you all make the judgment whether they’re correct.”
Undeterred, Rosen continued, “The question I have for you, sir, if you’d let me finish, is why do you suppose such large segments of the American electorate have come to harbor such profound concerns about your cognitive fitness?”
Biden’s response: “I have no idea.”
A host of obvious explanations come to mind, but in fairness to the president, as Rosen himself acknowledged, he had just been answering nearly two hours of questions, surprising many of us, myself included, that he could last that long.
However (and you knew that was coming), the questions for the first hour were of the pre-planned variety asked almost obsequiously by the usual selection of reporters who are in essence “court eunuchs.”
MIA was anything about the elephant—make that the herd of elephants—in the room, something about the horrific escalation of murder and violent crime, not to mention organized snatch-and-grab robbery gangs, in virtually all our major cities. Just the day before, a woman was pushed to her death off a subway platform in New York, another stabbed to death tending a store on a busy street in the heart of Los Angeles.
This crime wave—augmented nearly everywhere by “progressive” district attorneys—alone could easily cost the Democrats the next election, but you wouldn’t have known it at the press conference where omertà ruled on the subject.
Also MIA were any challenges to the massive and unprecedented wave of illegal immigrants pouring across our southern border from countries all over the world with hardly anyone vaccinated let alone any sense of who was a human trafficker, drug dealer, or terrorist. Instead, many were headed to California for free health care, while others were conveniently jetted to the states of the Biden administration’s choice and dumped there.
Other hot button issues such as inflation and COVID-19 were actually discussed with Biden, the furthest thing from a Truman “the buck stops here” kind of guy, uniformly blaming others for all problems, especially Republicans and Trump, including for our empty supermarket shelves and supply chain woes.
But the whopper gaffe of the event was of course Biden allowing the Russians to bite off a little of Ukraine. (Cut to: Putin as a grizzly bear licking his chops. Cut to: Montage of panicked Ukrainians, Czechs, Poles, Lithuanians, Latvians, Estonians, Hungarians, and maybe a few Austrians. Dissolve to: Russian tanks, on the move. Dissolve to: Chinese jets bearing down on Taiwan.)
The last day or so has been spent cleaning up this mess, assuming that’s possible.
It’s probably not. It wasn’t really news because I would imagine Vladimir and Xi had long ago drawn their conclusions about our president’s willingness (or more likely lack thereof) to stand up for democracies worldwide.
Remember, Biden was the one who advised President Barack Obama not to go after bin Laden—it would be too risky. He was also the one described by former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates as having been wrong on every foreign policy issue for decades.
He was finally the one who decided to close Bagram Airbase before evacuating our forces and allies from Afghanistan while leaving behind billions in military equipment for the Taliban. (No questions on that one either by the “hard-boiled” press.)
And then there’s the little matter of what incriminating evidence might exist on Hunter’s laptop to affect our international relations. (No questions about that, of course, by now the most verboten of all subjects.)
But back to Rosen. Was his question that made so many of the mainstream media reporters in the room gasp or sniff at his unconscionable impropriety legitimate?
Is this all a matter of mental incompetence or just plain ordinary political incompetence?
I tend to think it’s a bit of both, but in the end, as the lady said, “What difference does it make?”
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