By Bret Stephens / The New York Times
In 1992, as President George W. Bush was campaigning for reelection during a recession, he made the mistake of apparently reading a little too fully from a cue card. “Message: I care,” he said to an audience in Exeter, N.H. The gaffe became a subject of endless mockery and, as the political writer Mark Leibovich later observed, served as a kind of epitaph for a doomed campaign.
On Thursday, it was déjà vu all over again. Speaking to a union conference at the Washington Hilton, President Joe Biden rattled off a list of his ambitions for a second term. “Folks, imagine what we could do next,” he said, trying to rouse his audience. “Four more years — pause.”
The president seemed to quickly realize his mistake, at least to judge by the self-knowing grin that came over his face a few seconds later. An initial White House transcript of his remarks omitted the “pause,” claiming the word was inaudible. But as video of the remarks went viral someone seems to have thought better of that elision and restored the word to the current transcript.
If the Biden team is wise, they’ll get the president to repeat the line a few times in the form of a self-knowing wisecrack, much as they cleverly turned the anti-Biden “Let’s go Brandon” taunt into a cool “Dark Brandon” meme. Biden’s announcement Friday that he would be “happy to” debate Donald Trump in the fall might also help allay concerns about his mental acuity; assuming, of course, that he performs reasonably well in a debate.
But the larger problem for the Biden campaign is that perceptions about the president’s physical and mental fitness are hardly baseless. Axios reports that White House aides now surround the president as he walks across the South Lawn to his presidential helicopter; all for the purpose of disguising his shuffling walk. The New York Times has issued a statement calling it “troubling” that the president “has so actively and effectively avoided questions from independent journalists during his term.” One can reasonably speculate as to why the president and his staff would want to avoid such questions.
There was a time in American life where the White House and the press colluded to hide the infirmities or indiscretions of the sitting president: Woodrow Wilson’s stroke; Franklin Roosevelt’s wheelchair; John F. Kennedy’s chronic back pain (and philandering). It’s past time for this White House to accept that that time is over.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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