Stephanopoulos & Biden—And the Lord Almighty

George Stephanopoulos’s interview of President Biden was painful to watch—unless, probably, you’re Donald Trump. Even partisan Trump supporters could feel sorry for the president—though that would be a mistake: if you were in Biden’s shoes, he would not feel sorry for you.

At least some people were not sure Stephanopoulos would ask, and then press, hard questions. He did. But there was no real reason to suppose he would let Biden off lightly: he surely wants the Democrats to win the election as much as any other partisan Democrat, and letting Biden remain the party’s candidate is—now, clearly—not in their best interest.

Biden looked, well, awful. He looked—there really isn’t any other word for it—orange. He is now Orange Man. That may be catty. But it also may not be irrelevant. Why does he look orange? Why was he made up to look orange? Who was in charge? Why can’t he look . . . normal? Or is that just the way old men look? Really old men. Does he need makeup to look normal? Who will tell us?

Looks aren’t everything, but they aren’t nothing either. It’s the first thing people see, obviously. In the first televised debate between presidential candidates, Nixon looked awful; Kennedy looked great. Interestingly, people who watched the debate on television thought Kennedy won; people who only listened to it on the radio thought Nixon won. Looks matter.

Biden sounded weak—his voice was frail, hoarse, and hesitating. That doesn’t exude a sense of command. We want a president who is in command and who sounds as if he is in command. When he lectures foreign leaders who need lecturing, we want them to know they’re being lectured to—and to pay attention, damn it! It is perfectly obvious Biden can’t do that, whatever the substance of his answers to Stephanopoulos’s questions was.

He stole some bases, but that’s just typical of any pol—and maybe stealing bases indicates some competence. He mentioned the number of new jobs that were created last month, but he didn’t mention that unemployment went up last month. Lots of people who don’t follow the news closely may not catch that, but others will. Stephanopoulos let it pass; he may not be up on the statistics. But Trump would have murdered him for it. (“Murdered” is used here metaphorically.)

Stephanopoulos (again to his credit) pressed Biden on whether he would be willing to take a cognitive test. Biden dodged the question: “Every day I take that test.” Please.

Trump took such a test when he was president. The 30-point test included drawings of a lion and a rhinoceros, which patients must name. It involved such actions as drawing a clock (very difficult for people with cognitive problems), counting backward by sevens, and listing words that begin with “F” in one minute. And he remembered a given list of five words right away and the same list five minutes later as well. Dr. Ronny Jackson, a Rear Admiral who served as Barack Obama’s official physician, administered the test. Jackson’s report: “It was a more difficult one of all of them. It took significantly longer to complete, and the president did extremely well on it.”

Biden said he takes a cognitive test every day? Ridiculous. It was impossible to miss his dodging the question.

Perhaps his most surprising answer was to Stephanopoulos’s question of how would he feel if he lost to Trump: “As long as I gave it my all, that’s what this is all about.”

Come again? It’s not about the country? It’s not about preserving democracy from Trump? It’s all about . . . Biden? All about the effort Biden put in? That’s what it’s all about?

That really is an extraordinarily self-centered statement. Being translated, what Biden said was: “It’s all just about me.”

That will not endear him to his fellow Democrats.

Many Republicans—actually, probably most Republicans—probably want Biden to stay in the race because it seems likely, at least now, that Trump can beat him.

But supposing he doesn’t. Republicans have to ask themselves if they want an incompetent in the White House. Is it better to have the president be incompetent and fail miserably at getting any domestic legislation through Congress? But then, who will manage foreign affairs? Probably the answer is that no one could manage it as badly as Biden has.

Biden said only the Lord Almighty could persuade him to drop out of the race. Given Biden’s position on abortion, it would not be surprising if the Lord Almighty took that action. And this column can now predict that that is exactly what the Lord Almighty will do.

Daniel Oliver is Chairman of the Board of the Education and Research Institute and a Director of Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy in San Francisco. In addition to serving as Chairman of the Federal Trade Commission under President Reagan, he was Executive Editor and subsequently Chairman of the Board of William F. Buckley Jr.’s National Review.

Email Daniel Oliver at Daniel.Oliver@TheCandidAmerican.com.