Did you see Joe Biden’s recent speech last Monday afternoon, on the Afghanistan disaster? It was not a pleasant sight. Like him as president or not, and I don’t, no sane person wants a mental invalid in the office of president of the United States. What we saw in that speech makes that point extremely relevant.
Biden could hardly get a sentence out without a serious mental decline showing in his eyes, voice, and speech patterns. He mangled easy words, he squinted, he hunched over as if he was having problems reading the teleprompter. His reasoning was deficient to the point of incoherence. This speech broadcasted to America and the world that we have a president who is not in command of his senses. Thus, how can he serve as Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces? There are precedents for presidents.
During the latter part of Woodrow Wilson’s second term he was felled by a stroke. He was in and out of sentience. He did not know where or who he was. His wife and top aide ran the country for about two years, unbeknownst to the public because the press, like today, chose to look the other way.
FDR, during his last six months in office, was severely impaired mentally and physically. Churchill saw it at Yalta. There, FDR believed Soviet assurances and thus bought into the subjugation of Eastern Europe for what was eventually to be almost half a century. Again, the press averted its gaze.
FDR’s declining health was the main reason pro-communist veep Henry Wallace was thrown from the ticket and common sense tough hombre Harry Truman replaced him. If Wallace had succeeded to the presidency after FDR died shortly after Yalta, we would live in a far different world. One where freedom, if at all alive in the West, would be a flickering candle.
And now Joe Biden, in an obvious state of ill health, presides over the most humiliating American debacle since Vietnam, and perhaps, in the history of our country. Pearl Harbor, the Bay of Pigs, Saigon, Desert One, the hostage crisis, all were American embarrassments and worse. But, after the lessons of Saigon, how do we execute the same debacle? Wouldn’t a mentally aware chief executive, who was already in the Senate during the fall of Saigon, have noticed the similarities between Kabul and Saigon and worked to make sure the same thing didn’t happen? Yes.
Even on Friday Biden still can’t make sense of the situation. He said at a presser, “There’ll be plenty of time to criticize and second guess when this operation is over, but now I’m focused on getting this job done.” But that’s just it. He hasn’t gotten the job done. Only enormously mucked it up.
“I don’t think it could’ve been handled in a way that- we’re going to go back in hindsight and look but the idea that somehow there was a way to have gotten out without chaos ensuing, I don’t know how that happens,” Biden told ABC News. Wrong again. There was a way out without chaos. A capable president who could clearly think, speak, and act would have found it. That kind of president does not sit behind the Resolute desk this hour.
Join the Discussion
COMMENTS POLICY: We have no tolerance for messages of violence, racism, vulgarity, obscenity or other such discourteous behavior. Thank you for contributing to a respectful and useful online dialogue.