In a career spanning more than half a century, President Biden has long been known for mangling words, names and dates in verbal errors known, perhaps mildly, as gaffes.
During the 2020 presidential campaign, then-President Donald Trump publicly accused Biden, then just 77, of “dementia.” The insult didn't stick; Biden ran an effective enough campaign to defeat Trump in November.
But the controversy over the president's mental fitness has only intensified as he seeks a second term.
Biden's age, as the oldest man to serve as president, inescapably weighs on voters' minds.
Thursday's report from special counsel Robert Hur deepened Biden's political problem by painting a more damaging official picture of the president than had been seen before.
The report said Biden, now 81, seemed like a “well-intentioned old man with a bad memory.”
Maybe that was the nicest thing he said.
In his interviews with Hur, Biden had difficulty remembering what years he had served as vice president and what year his son Beau had died, according to the report. My memory of him from a White House debate on Afghanistan, a topic he was once passionate about, was confusing.
When asked, the president responded: “If it was 2013, when did I stop being vice president?”
Biden and his aides responded to the report with fury.
“I know what the hell I'm doing,” the president told reporters a few hours after the report was released.
On Friday, Vice President Kamala Harris, a former prosecutor, called Hur's decision to include details of Biden's memory lapses “gratuitous” and “politically motivated,” a talking point that other Democrats repeated throughout the day. (The special counsel is a Republican originally appointed by Trump.)
Aides suggested Biden may not have been at his best when he met with Hur. They said he was focused on the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, which had occurred just days before the interviews.
Still, as Biden demonstrated, the question of his physical condition threatens to surface every time he appears in public. On Thursday, at the press conference he called to defend his mental acuity, she misidentified the president of Egypt as the president of Mexico.
The question looms on both sides of the presidential campaign, as Trump, who turns 78 in June, would be the second-oldest man to win a major party nomination.
And Trump also seems to often suffer from memory lapses.
He recently confused Nikki Haley, his last remaining rival for the Republican nomination, with Nancy Pelosi, the former Democratic speaker of the House.
He referred to the president of Hungary as the president of Türkiye.
Last year he boasted that he defeated President Obama in the 2016 election, when his opponent was Hillary Clinton, and claimed that he had won all 50 states that year (he won 30).
He warned that Biden could lead the country into “World War II.”
Polls suggest that most voters perceive Trump as more vigorous than Biden. An NBC News poll this week showed Trump ahead by 16 points on the question of who is more competent and effective.
In a YouGov poll released Friday, 47% of voters said Biden's health and age would “severely limit his ability to perform his duties” if he were re-elected in November. Only 32% said the same about Trump.
But neither candidate emerged from that poll as a clear winner.
The YouGov poll found that about the same proportion of Americans thought Biden or Trump would be fit to serve another term: just over a third in each case. One in five said neither of them would be fit.
Trump has obvious flaws beyond his memory problems. He is the undisputed king of presidential lying; The Washington Post has estimated that he made more than 30,000 false or misleading claims during his four years in the White House.
He frequently expresses admiration (or perhaps envy) for dictators such as Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
Trump has also argued that a president should be immune from federal laws and that the provisions of the Constitution that allowed Biden to win the 2020 election should be “terminated.”
And, of course, he faces a series of accusations in four separate criminal cases, including one for refusing to hand over classified documents after leaving the White House. Although Hur criticized Biden's memory, he also highlighted contrasting Biden's cooperation with Trump's evasion.
“After receiving multiple opportunities to return classified documents and avoid prosecution, Mr. Trump allegedly did the opposite,” Hur's report says. “According to the indictment, he not only refused to return the documents for many months, but he also obstructed justice by recruiting others to destroy evidence and then lying about it.”
So yes, both candidates have memory problems. The most important question is: whose judgment is more sensible?
Biden's response to reporters' questions about his physical condition seemed simple: “Look at me.”
Voters have the right to respond: “Okay, show us.”
But the president and his advisers have carefully rationed their public exposure.
For the record:
5:50 pm February 9, 2024A previous version of this column said the Super Bowl will be on Monday. It will be played on Sunday.
He hasn't attended many town halls, an exercise he once enjoyed. He has dodged most requests for media interviews. She even passed up the opportunity for a nationally broadcast interview during Sunday's Super Bowl, an opportunity most presidents take to reach a gigantic audience.
Several years ago, I asked Biden what strategy he relied on to recover from a mistake.
“Make it yours,” he said.
But in response to Hur's report, he angrily denied that he had serious memory problems.
“They don't know what they're talking about,” he said of the prosecutors.
But you might be better off taking your own advice and owning up to your mistakes.
After all, the voters' choice is between two old men with bad memories, and only one of them does not respect the Constitution.
The question is not who has the sharpest aging memory. They are whose defects are most dangerous.
