As a longtime baseball fan and an observer of politics, I often hark back to Yogi Berra’s memorable quip, “It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.”
However, I think I nailed it in an April 2021 article in Human Events: “One thing is for certain; we can expect to see continuing validation from President Biden of the old quip, ‘How can you tell when a politician is lying? His lips are moving.’ But in the same way that you can’t take your eyes off a train wreck in progress, it will be fascinating to see whether the salient feature of Biden’s presidency will be his mendacity or his dementia — or some incendiary admixture of the two.”
Clearly, we’ve seen both during the three years of his presidency and, as many pundits have noted, the dementia is worsening.
There are many examples of Biden’s unfamiliarity with the truth. His insistence that there was “unanimity” among his civilian and military advisers about the disastrous plan to withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan and about the “success” of his border and immigration policies is patently absurd.
Military leaders understand how to conduct strategic withdrawals, and our Southern border leaks like a sieve.
The president’s September 2021 comments about the costs of the massive “infrastructure” legislation favored by the administration were ludicrous and barely coherent, both Biden trademarks. This is verbatim from the White House account of the speech:
“We talk about price tags. The — it is zero price tag on the debt. We’re paying — we’re going to pay for everything we spend. So they say it’s not — you know, people, understandably — ‘Well, you know, it started off at $6 trillion, now it’s $3.5 trillion. Now it’s — is it going to be $2.9? Is it…’
“It’s going to be zero — zero. Because in the — in that plan that I put forward — and I said from the outset — I said, ‘I’m running to change the dynamic of how the economy grows.’”
A zero price tag for an infrastructure bill? As the Wall Street Journal’s Gerard Baker wrote, “The Biden bill is paid for by the largest tax increase in history. You are entitled to argue that is a cost worth paying, but you can’t argue it costs nothing.”
To anyone who has followed Biden’s political career, this is part of a pattern. Over several decades, he has become infamous for gaffes, blunders … and lies. While he served in the Senate, Biden’s untruthfulness was so legendary that congressional staffers began passing around a spoof Biden resumé claiming that he was the “inventor of polyurethane and the weedeater” and “Member, Rockettes (1968).”
Eventually, the habit of lying began to overlap with clear evidence of cognitive decline. During the 2008 presidential campaign, Biden observed: “When the stock market crashed (in 1929), Franklin Roosevelt got on television” and explained it to the public. In fact, Roosevelt did not become president until 1933, and his first appearance on TV was six years later.
Since that gaffe, Biden, who is now 81, has increasingly fumbled and bumbled in his public remarks, most spectacularly during last month’s presidential campaign debate with Donald Trump in Atlanta.
At times, he mumbled and slurred his speech and was incoherent.
Biden’s cognitive decline is not new, but it has worsened. In March 2021, the leader of the Free World forgot not only the name of his own defense secretary but also the name of the building (the Pentagon) in which the headquarters of the Department of Defense is located. Since then, the president has avoided opportunities for reporters to pose unscripted questions.
With good reason — the New York Times reported on July 2:
“In the weeks and months before President Biden’s politically devastating performance on the debate stage in Atlanta, several current and former officials and others who encountered him behind closed doors noticed that he increasingly appeared confused or listless, or would lose the thread of conversations.”
As a physician, I recognize the signs of dementia when I see them, including the acceleration of the president’s dissembling, bumbling, memory impairment, and spouting unintelligible combinations of words that psychiatrists call “word salad.”
Biden is clearly not presidential material, if he ever was.
Henry I. Miller, a physician and molecular biologist, is the Glenn Swogger distinguished fellow at the American Council on Science and Health.
