Biden’s patent incompetence to perform as president

Peggy Noonan devotes her weekly Wall
Street Journal column of 2024 to “the decline of Joe Biden’s
mental acuity.” In her last column of his final year in
office, she takes notice that Biden is “The
President who wasn’t there.” Published
online today, it will appear in Saturday’s hard copy of the
Journal tomorrow.

In this column Noonan takes note of
Biden’s patent incompetence to perform as president. Noonan
recounts the story of Woodrow Wilson’s final years when Edith
Wilson filled the president’s shoes. Gene Smith provided a
popular account of the story in When
the Cheering Stopped (1964). Noonan draws
on Scott Berg’s biography Wilson (2014).
It is at least worth noting in this context that I have
referred to Jill Biden as “Edith” in posts extending back to “Quotations
from Dementia Joe” (September 13, 2020).

Photo: Woodrow Wilson and Edith Wilson 

I wish some cynical editor at the
Journal had headlined Noonan’s column This
Just In. Although it appears to have escaped Noonan’s
notice, Biden’s decline has been visible to observers at least
since since the 2020 presidential campaign. Mark Halperin
states that he observed Biden’s senility up close in 2017. He
hammers on Biden’s calling out to deceased Rep. Jackie
Walorski at a White House event in September 2022: “Where’s
Jackie?” This was in public over two years ago.

Did Noonan miss this? Perhaps she
swallowed KJP’s creative “explanation.”

Biden’s senility is a function of
nature. We all understand what’s happening. It would be nice
to know what accounts for Noonan’s mental oblivion, if that’s
what it is, or shamelessness in ignoring the obvious until it
has become respectable to expound on it.