A Most Complicated Political Year: And A Perfect Storm For Donald Trump

In their December 19, 2024 article, “How The White House Functioned With a Diminished Biden in Charge”, the Wall Street Journal describes from the perspectives of several journalists a compendium of convincing circumstantial evidence that the President’s inner circle was complicit in limiting the exposure of a President in obvious mental and physical decline.
There are no doctors notes suggesting such decline that made its way into the public domain nor are there any surreptitiously obtained diagnoses that had evaded the scrutiny of the media and therefore the public.

However, it was certainly obvious to anyone that watched Joe Biden debate Donald Trump on June 27, 2024 that the President–one in which words could not be immediately articulated into thoughts, one in which a President beloved to many could not state his policy positions, parry the attacks by Trump, or in anyway go on the offensive against a man convicted of thirty four felonies, charged with nearly 100 more including an attempt to ‘defraud the United States of the legitimate results of an election–was severely diminished and must have been for a considerable period of time.

President Biden had shown bravado in challenging Trump to that debate and the expectations for his performance were high–that he might finally refute, rebut and diminish this challenger that had been so disrespectfully misrepresenting the President’s positions, depriving him of credit for enormous bi- partisan policy achievements, belittling his stutter and his intellect. Sadly, tragically, the bravado–which no doubt came from a place deep within President Biden, a place of pride, competition, confidence and disgust at the prospect of another Donald Trump Presidential term–
came from the spirit that has served him his entire life, but grievously, disastrously, could not be supported by the mind. President Biden should not have entered that debate–his boxing skills had diminished to the point that he could not even hold up his gloves. He was in the ring with a fighter that threw punches in an angry, flailing fashion, no boxing style to it at all–a fighter filled with vulnerabilities that a previously more deft and quick Biden would have exploited.

I was thinking that this was not simply a tired and jet lagged President. The look in his eyes must have been depressing for anyone that loves him and that had to watch a loved one decline precipitously due to memory loss, dementia, or Alzheimers. Joe Biden should not have been on that stage. The fight should not have occurred. And the Democrats should have had instead a fighter that was ring savvy, one with a vicious jab, and could deliver a knock out punch. One that could expose the criminal vulnerabilities of Donald Trump and his deep threat to American democracy. President Biden did that effectively enough in 2020. Donald Trump did not do much to win this debate, except show up and smirk.

President Biden simply gave Trump the Presidency in this debate. And where is the blame ? Who do we blame ?
We can blame the will to win of President Biden–but it is a will to win that has brought him to the highest heights and helped him to overcome the lowest lows of human tragedy. We can blame Hubris, born of being insulated from the Truth of his own mental and physical condition. And the Wall Street Journal article makes it clear that this insulation–and therefore the blame or a large part of the blame-lay upon the loyal, but ultimately self deceptive motivations of President Biden’s inner circle.

The Wall Street Journal article is a highly convincing expose of a president being insulated from the public and his cabinet by an inner circle with interests more narrow than ‘seeing the larger picture of winning the election.’ In particular the inability of Adam Smith, chairman of Armed Services Committee to get close enough to President Biden to let him know that his public declarations about Afghanistan were too sanguine and seemed to create unrealistically high expectations is particularly lamentable.

Jill Biden’s role is understandable on one level as a wife protective of her husband’s feelings and still believing in his intellectual capacity. However, did she not see the evidence of this decline ? Did she shelter him from situations where this diminished capacity would be revealed ? If so, she made compromises and compensations at the expense of an urgency and public necessity that should not have been made, in my opinion. As the Journal points out, there were a number of polls showing the public’s concern about the President’s decline. And only a few that showed that his demise and age were not a serious issue. Did the inner circle censor the negative polls and only show the President the ones that gave him hope ? This kind of sheltering from the ‘truth’–if indeed this is what happened–only served the candidacy of Donald Trump.

We can only imagine the ‘bunker mentality’ that surrounds a President with crises everywhere. And an historic election unfolding against a candidate that induced so much trepidation created considerable pressure to not make mistakes. The Biden circle clearly erred on the side of over confidence.

The Wall Street Journal article suggests that President Biden’s handlers were acting out of self interest and a deluded belief–based on Biden’s being sheltered to a large extent from most anyone except his immediate inner circle during much of 2023 and through 2024–that he could win this election against a man that he had already defeated and was guilty of crimes, facing a litany of indictments and also nearly his own age.

Certainly part of President Biden’s governing approach was one of style–he wanted to run ideas through advisors and recognized he had to maintain stamina in the ‘toughest job in the world’–but clearly the public was also prevented from exposure and denied the opportunity to evaluate whether other candidates might be essential to defeat Trump.

One might say that the Democrats ran a master class in how to lose an election–turning it over to a woman of color, hardly known by the public except for what was sometimes perceived as an ‘inappropriate laugh,’ someone that had run a failed campaign on her own–with just weeks to go before the election.

Kamala Harris exceeded expectations–there was a charisma, an energy, a charm, an intelligence an optimism to her condensed candidacy. It was so opposite of the cataclysmic demise of President Biden during the debate and its aftermath of sadness, dejection, hopelessness and despair. Kamala offered hope; but in retrospect she was handed a virtually impossible task to defeat a candidate that polls showed represented change at a time people were clearly saying that they wanted change from the current administration.

The Wall Street Journal article does not point out –it’s intention is to let us know how incapable Biden was of running for a second term and of course we all saw that frailty in its most sad manifestation during the debate–that millions of people felt empowered by him and gave his age the benefit of the doubt. President Biden’s State of the Union earlier this year was a masterful Socratic-like, almost classical Greek baiting of his opponents, as he called out Republican policy hypocrisy. One had the sense after that speech that he would be formidable.

President Biden’s speech after October 7 was deeply moving. At that point he was more popular in Israel than Prime Minister Netanyahu when he brought American friendship and delivered the remarks, saying that “as long as the United States stands–and we will stand forever–we will not let you ever be alone…”

And the courage, determination, steely will to stare down imperial fascism was on clear display when a nearly eighty year old Biden took a several hour train ride into Kyiv in the early days after the Putin invasion–bombs, guns, mortar, missiles being directed upon the capital City–standing with the Ukrainian resistance.
Speaking for the Western world and directly for NATO Biden stated that “…when Putin launched his invasion nearly one year ago, he thought Ukraine was weak and the West was divided. He thought he could outlast us. But he was dead wrong…”

President Biden’s policies throughout his Presidency were some of the best examples of bi-partisan agreement any president had ever had: the Infrastructure Act, Inflation Reduction Act, and the Chips Act to name three major accomplishments for the middle class. In his first 150 days in office his streamlined vaccination policy had delivered 300 million shots. He provided Medicare with the capability to independently negotiate drug prices, considerably lowering the costs of many drugs, particularly insulin which was capped at $35.00–a 70 percent reduction.

So, throughout much of the Biden presidency Americans had every right to believe that he could successfully defeat Trump–his successes transcended his slow and unsteady walk and the continued softness of his voice almost to a whisper. But none of us were ” in the room where it happened”, the room where his handlers limited his exposure and tried to conceal the ever increasing frailty–further and further insulating him from even members of his cabinet according to the Journal revelations.

President Biden’s inner circle kept the truth about his physical and mental condition from the American people because his successes spoke volumes and on a good day Biden seemed formidable. But in the end the good days became fewer and fewer and we really did not know the extent of that until THE DEBATE.

The Wall Street Journal article describes the extent of that cover up. But it does not address the successes. Clearly the President should have stepped aside at the mid term elections and opened up the primary season to younger, talented, fierce contenders. But the success of the mid-terms just fueled Biden and his inner circle-contributing to defiance and Hubris. The Biden team thought they could win until it became obvious they could not. So is this inner circle to blame ? Yes. Knowing what we know now they should have realized that there was no way for their man to win the Presidency for a second term. But they did not know what we know now, and the American people might just mitigate their anger toward a successful, determined President that simply thought he could win.

But he could not and so many of us are mad. And justifiably mad. Because it seemed that this should have been a winnable election against a tyrannical element that threatens the survival of American democracy as it has been known. However, I do not agree that Americans are not justified in thinking two years ago that Biden could win and not demanding more forcefully that he step down. In the end it became a perfect storm for Donald Trump: a confluence of variables that almost seems like historical determinism. It has been a most complicated political year–and future historians will tell us what it all meant and means.

Bruce Farrell Rosen