Why Is Biden So Frightened by a Drug Test? - The American Spectator | USA News and Politics
Why Is Biden So Frightened by a Drug Test?
by
Biden in Tampa earlier this week (YouTube screenshot)

The federal government mandates that millions of Americans submit to drug screenings to qualify for certain types of positions. This includes members of the military and other employees of the Department of Defense. Yet 2020 Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden — a man who wants the voters to elect him Commander in Chief — called President Trump a fool on Monday for suggesting that they both submit to just a such a test before their first debate. Biden has responded equally defensively to requests that he produce a recent cognitive acuity test. This will inevitably cause voters to wonder what he’s hiding.

At least one Times columnist quite literally opined that he would prefer a cognitively impaired President Biden to the hated President Trump. 

The Democrats and the corporate media scoff at Trump’s drug test challenge as if it isn’t to be taken seriously. They dismiss it as if the president is merely trolling Biden. In reality, however, he is asking a serious question to which the voters deserve a serious answer. In the unlikely event that Biden somehow wins in November, he will have access to the nation’s nuclear launch codes. Does anyone reading this believe this is a good idea after witnessing his incoherent maunderings and erratic behavior? The most recent medical report we have on him was released last year, and it omits any serious assessment of his mental or emotional capacity to handle the office he seeks.

The president of the United States wields a level of power equaling the wildest fantasies of the most megalomaniacal Roman emperor, including a Praetorian Guard. In addition to commanding the most powerful military force on the planet, he will preside over the largest and most sophisticated state police apparatus in human history. He will have the alarming power to order drone strikes on anyone anywhere on the planet. Yet the media won’t discuss whether Biden’s age has affected his physical and mental fitness to serve. They weren’t always so reticent, as the New York Times clearly demonstrated after the 1984 Reagan–Mondale debate in Louisville, Kentucky:

The President seemed to lose his way in Louisville, got his figures mixed up, and didn’t seem to be mentally alert in dealing with Mr. Mondale’s arguments. This is being attributed by some to his advancing years.… What Louisville did was not to expose his age, which everybody knew, but to expose his mind, which the voters didn’t know. This is what has been covered up in the last four years by his amiable personality, and his superb reading of speeches from invisible mirrors, written and contrived by the best public-relations team ever to enter the White House.

I defy any reader to find an opinion piece in the Times that discusses Biden’s “advancing years” in such terms. Despite utterances so incoherent that — had they been expressed by any Republican official at any level — would have led the Gray Lady’s editors to call for his immediate withdrawal from public life, our erstwhile vice president gets a pass. Indeed, they behave as if merely raising such questions about him is a dirty trick. At least one Times columnist quite literally opined that he would prefer a cognitively impaired President Biden to the hated President Trump. I’m not kidding. This piece of Solomonic wisdom emanated from the keyboard of Frank Bruni:

Please tell me why I should care whether Joe Biden is declining mentally when Donald Trump bottomed out morally long ago. I’m serious. I’d rather drink milk past its expiration date than arsenic.… But Biden’s bumbling isn’t the defining issue, not even close, and we shouldn’t let Trump use it to do in 2020 what he did in 2016, which was to portray his opponent — then, Hillary Clinton — as so enormously unappealing and recklessly unacceptable that, to many Americans, Trump looked ever so marginally better in comparison, which is to say that he looked endurable.

This passage suggests that Bruni believes the presidency is primarily about those White House soirées he misses so much from the Obama years or he thinks that Biden will be forced out of office shortly after Inauguration Day pursuant to the 25th Amendment. Assuming that even Bruni isn’t shallow enough to believe the former, he will be unpleasantly surprised to discover how difficult it is to accomplish the latter. Our erstwhile vice president’s campaign staff isn’t very smart, but they do understand that replacing their guy with Kamala Harris would result in a purge that few of them would survive. Neither they nor First Lady Jill Biden would cooperate with any such effort.

This is where it gets scary. The country would be burdened with a Potemkin presidency that would resemble the last year of Woodrow Wilson’s term, during which his wife, his doctors, and a tiny cabal of unelected insiders ran the executive branch of the United States government. Only, this time, it would last far longer and Vice President Harris and her cadre of co-conspirators would be powerless to stop it because she needs the cooperation of Congress, where she has few allies and fewer friends. Meanwhile, as this protracted struggle for control of the Swamp rages, neither the Chinese nor Iran would be idle. As for trade and the economy? To quote Donnie Brasco, “Fuggedaboutit.”

Biden’s chances of winning are very low, of course, the polls notwithstanding. But he can improve his odds by accepting the president’s drug test challenge. Biden might even be able to beat Trump if he does so, and passes, particularly if he will produce a credible cognitive acuity test. The voters worry when the former VP fumbles a softball question with an incoherent response. They notice when he halts his campaign schedule at 9 a.m. So, why doesn’t he call Trump’s bluff? What’s he hiding? If you were applying for a job, would you refuse a drug screening or decline an aptitude test? Of course not. So, is it really any big mystery why Joe Biden is afraid to do so?

David Catron
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David Catron is a recovering health care consultant and frequent contributor to The American Spectator. You can follow him on Twitter at @Catronicus.
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