Søren Kierkegaard once said that “every assertion suggests its opposite.” Shakespeare implied the same thing when he had Queen Gertrude in Hamlet say, “The Lady doth protest too much, methinks.”
“Protesting too much” is what today we would call “gaslighting” — repeating a bald lie with such assurance that one might expect it to be accepted without question.
Biden and his aides have been gaslighting throughout his presidency and long before it. Now there are the lies about Biden’s performance in his disastrous debate. His spokesperson, Karine Jean-Pierre, said on Wednesday that Biden was jetlagged before the debate (despite eleven days since significant travel), that he had a cold (despite looking perfectly well during appearances the night of and the day after the debate), that he had “a bad night” (just one?), and that he was burdened with the duties of his job (isn’t everyone?).
The fact is, as Carl Bernstein put it, Biden displayed signs of similar dysfunction dozens of times before the debate. Biden did not suffer an off night on Tuesday — he has been “off” for years, making horrible decisions that have resulted in the deaths of American servicemen and endangered overseas forces and those of our allies while harming our economy at home.
Now comes the biggest lie of his presidency: the assertion that he is not considering withdrawing from the presidential race. Whether or not he actually withdraws or resigns, it is ludicrous to pretend that Biden has not contemplated doing so.
During her Wednesday press conference, KJP repeated a dozen times that the president is not considering withdrawing from the race. Protesting that much, over and over and without any qualification, is as much as admitting that Biden is weighing his options. It would have been more believable had she said, “Given his poor performance and mental decline, he is considering a withdrawal but is leaning toward continuing in the race.” That would have put an end to the questioning; an outright denial, attempting to foreclose further questioning, simply encouraged more questions.
It didn’t help that the New York Times published an article on Tuesday claiming that Biden’s lapses have recently grown “more frequent, more pronounced and more worrisome.” On July 5, Biden held an interview with ABC’s George Stephanopolos. In a piece on vox.com, Andrew Prokop wrote that “anything less than a dazzling performance will imperil his political future further.”
I suspect that the president and his advisers, including his family, have already “weighed” his options in great detail and may have already decided on an exit plan, including a full pardon for Hunter and other members of his family and assurance that he, Joe Biden, will receive a full pardon from his successor, Kamala Harris. That was the arrangement the last time a president was forced to resign, and Nixon’s successor, Gerald Ford, was roundly criticized for his pardon. That “full and unconditional pardon” may well have cost Ford the election against Jimmy Carter.
Can Biden trust Harris to carry through with the pardon? I doubt it. Harris is inarticulate, socially clumsy, and apparently rather unintelligent, but she is politically ambitious. Pardons of unpopular figures don’t go down well, and they are memorable.
As to whether Biden will actually withdraw, those who pretend to know (“because Jill wants to remain in the White House,” “because Hunter needs protection,” “because Joe has a huge ego”) cannot know.
What we can know is that, if he is going to withdraw, it makes sense to do so sooner rather than later. An immediate withdrawal would give the party time to settle on someone else and for that someone else to begin campaigning and raising money. Waiting until the convention in late August or, even worse, after being nominated, would amount to a huge betrayal of his party.
Another alternative is a slow, unremitting pressure from donors and supporters forcing Biden to withdraw, but that might take weeks or months and would divide the party even more.
I would expect a decision, one way or another, in the next two weeks. Biden will either withdraw his name as a candidate, resign immediately (unlikely), or state unequivocally that he is staying in the race until the end. He can hardly wait until late August to withdraw. That would be a fatal blow to whatever reputation he still possesses.
It may be that Biden will remain in the race, try to counter the impression of his debate weakness with multiple public appearances (as he is already doing, using the teleprompter), recover his footing if he can, find an excuse not to debate again in September (as already agreed), and hope that enough votes can be harvested from illegal aliens and fraudulent names to squeak by in November, as he did in 2020.
But then, if he is re-elected, things will get far worse. I have witnessed senility many times among friends and family members, and I know that it does not get better and often rapidly gets worse. A completely incapacitated president could be hidden from sight in 1919–20, when the effects of Woodrow Wilson’s stroke were covered up by his wife, who, in effect, served as president of the USA. That kind of cover-up would be impossible today in the age of cell phones, media leaks, and public expectations of a visible leader. Within a year, Biden would be forced to resign, and we would be stuck with Kamala Harris.
The White House is attempting to mask all of these probabilities with their loud chorus of denial, protesting that the president is not weighing a withdrawal. But as Kierkegaard understood, every assertion suggests its opposite.
Jeffrey Folks is the author of many books and articles on American culture including Heartland of the Imagination (2011).
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