President Joe Biden said that he used to take the train across the Francis Scott Key Bridge in commuting from Delaware to Washington, D.C., in his statement addressing the disaster in Maryland.
A cargo ship downed the third-largest truss in the world and has possibly claimed multiple lives. This horrible event should not be about Joe Biden. But the president cannot help himself, and the American people cannot help but notice.
Why must he always insert himself into tragedies unconnected to his life? It feels not empathetic but narcissistic. In this instance, the fact that no trains crossed the Francis Scott Key Bridge compounds the ick. I-695 is a beltway circling Maryland, after all.
Did he ride not the Acela but the “Crazy Train”?
Like his claim a year ago that “[w]e have plans to build a railroad from the Pacific all the way across the Indian Ocean,” or his earlier boast of a long-retired and dead conductor congratulating him on over 2 million miles traveling on Amtrak, the president referencing “Francis Scott Key Bridge, which I have been over many, many times commuting from the state of Delaware either by train or by car,” bespeaks a captain not at the helm of the ship of state.
Biden recalling conversations about Jan. 6, 2021, with long-dead world leaders François Mitterrand and Helmut Kohl, or confusing the name of the young woman murdered by an illegal immigrant in Athens, Georgia, for the football coach at the University of Southern California, suggest creeping cognitive impairment. But long before his 80th birthday, the president bragged of his arrest in South Africa when trying to visit an imprisoned Nelson Mandela and repurposed Neil Kinnock’s life story as his own. Nobody blamed senility when he told bizarre whoppers in his 40s.
The president seeks to turn lemons into lemonade in his upcoming campaign against a 78-year-old.
“Look, I’m not a young guy,” Biden confesses in an ad running in select markets. “That’s no secret.”
He looks to Ronald Reagan — 73 rather than 81 when he ran for reelection — who, when asked about his vigor during a presidential debate, answered: “I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent’s youth and inexperience.”
One grasps the rationale of the president’s handlers. Walter Mondale pointed to that quip as the all-hope-is-lost moment of his already quixotic campaign. But for the line to work, it required Reagan to take the risk of debating his opponent and to demonstrate his wit and sharpness in front of inquisitive — hostile, even — journalists and an audience of millions.
Biden looks poised to become the first president since Richard Nixon to refuse to debate his opponent and even rebuffed the softball interview that presidents typically sit for during halftime of the Super Bowl. He dares not demonstrate wit for fear of appearing witless and squints his way to statements provided on a teleprompter. On Tuesday, he rolled over words, maybe the way his imaginary train rolled over the Francis Scott Key Bridge or in homage to the locals who drop a syllable when pronouncing Baltimore, to the point of incomprehensibility.
So, what does the ad, which acknowledges the issue as Reagan did but runs from any demonstration of his mental fitness to overcome the issue, accomplish? About the same as these past presidential advertisements.
“Look, I’m into interns slightly older than my daughter. That’s no secret.”
“Look, I can’t walk. That’s no secret.”
“Look, I’m so fat that I installed a bathtub in the White House. That’s no secret.”
What? Those ads never ran?
Maybe the advisers to those presidents thought the better of it. Maybe President Biden’s advisers should have thought the better of it too.
