Should I stay or should I go? If I stay there will be trouble … This wasn’t so much a press conference, more a job interview conducted in front of an audience of millions. One where almost everyone had already made up their mind that they would rather almost anyone else got the nod. This was politics as a bloodsport. Painful to watch. Like intruding on a personal grief. Because there could be no winner here. Were Joe Biden to be word perfect and razor sharp, the doubts would remain about his cognitive abilities. The US president cannot erase his recent past. The gaffes come with ever increasing frequency. The obvious confusion. The long silences. The middle-distance stares.
The tipping point was last month’s presidential debate with Donald Trump. Biden tried to pass it off as one bad moment. The reality was that it was an excruciating 90 minutes. A complete meltdown no pretence or artifice could cover up. You would be embarrassed if this was an elderly relative. No one should be allowed to humiliate themselves in this way. But this was the most powerful man in the western world. There was no coming back. Senior Democrats have become increasingly vocal about calling for him to step down. Nancy Pelosi has been notably careful in what she says. Congressmen have spoken out. George Clooney – reportedly with the implicit support of Barack Obama – has said it’s time for Biden to go. But Joe is the only person who can’t read the room. He could step down with dignity. He could point to his record over the last four years and say that at 81 he has had enough. That it’s time for someone else to take over. Yet Biden has dug his heels in and so this can only end one way. With him being dethroned. Either by losing the presidency to Trump or being forced out by increasingly desperate members of his own party.
It’s like a TV show. Imagine a world where Donald Trump – no stranger to getting things wrong and inventing his own reality – is considered to be the model of cognitive competence. But we are where we are. To the rest of the world it’s a sick joke, only one where there are no longer any laughs. We’re way beyond that point now. It’s a theatre of cruelty where the stakes are unbelievably high. The post-Nato press conference was the first opportunity for the world to see Biden in the raw since the debate. Biden unplugged. Biden unscripted. Sure he could read his opening statement off the autocue but then he would have to take questions from the media. A test of whether he could hold it together for nearly an hour. That’s how low the presidency has sunk. We’re obliged to give a president a free pass on the basis of limited information. Things didn’t get off to the best of starts. Ninety minutes before he gave his solo press conference he hosted the Ukraine Compact in front of dozens of world leaders. Making the introductions he referred to Volodymyr Zelenskiy as President Putin. And this was off an autocue. He tried to brush it off as a slip of the tongue. A joke even. But the damage was already done. Do that sort of thing once and you can get away with it. Do it repeatedly and people aren’t so forgiving. Especially when most people are primarily listening out for the mistakes. You could see the awkwardness on everyone’s face. Not long after, Keir Starmer was asked at his own press conference if this was yet another sign of Biden’s mental decline. The prime minister was a model of diplomacy. He had spent much of the conference telling the British media how on the ball the US president had been throughout and he insisted Biden be judged on his performance over the whole two days. He carefully avoided any reference to this latest mistake. But it’s not a good look when world leaders have to cover up. Just before 7.30pm in Washington, Biden went out to face a hostile media, all of whom were looking for any weakness. The president was no more than a global lab rat. He deserves better than that. He deserves respect for his achievements. But respect cuts both ways. His family should have enough respect for him not to put him through such an ordeal. A quiet word that enough is enough.
We had been warned that he might only take four questions but he went on to take 10. He was on a mission to prove there was nothing wrong with him. That he could take on all comers. Except he couldn’t. There was no coming back from the Zelenskiy/Putin debacle. The best that could be said about the press conference was that it wasn’t as bad as it might have been. Though that is to damn it with faint praise. There were long moments when Biden was perfectly lucid, with a stronger grasp of foreign policy than Trump could ever have managed. But equally there were many moments when he appeared confused. His sentences would start nowhere in particular and then abruptly tail off. His delivery was dreamy, disconnected and detached. At one point during a rambling diversion about Finland, he became distracted and fell silent for a moment. You could sense the embarrassment in the room. The media were reluctant participants at the crime scene. And of course there were the inevitable gaffes. Mistaking Europe for Asia barely rated a mention. Calling Kamala Harris “vice-president Trump” certainly did. That sent shockwaves through the nation. You just can’t go on making those sorts of mistakes and pretend that nothing is the matter. A decline on this scale should never have to be this public. “I’m ready now and I will be ready three years from now to deal with Putin,” he insisted. Only he didn’t sound like it. Nor did he look like it. It’s as if Biden is waiting on a miracle. To reset his campaign to a Day Zero when none of this has ever happened. Where all mistakes are forgotten. Only it doesn’t work like this. We’ve gone way too far for that. Nor is it enough merely to respond with the counter-factual of imagining how Donald Trump might have answered any of these questions. The bar shouldn’t have to be this low. The Democrats deserve better. America deserves better. The world deserves better.