Joe Biden wants to run again

Here is a translation of an article by Martin Suter Published: 22.04.2023, 22:01 in the Tages-Anzeiger, Zurich, Switzerland. It’s a different Point of View.

The president wants to announce his renewed candidacy on Tuesday – so there will probably be a rematch against Donald Trump in 2024. The loser has already been decided: the USA.

The once proud superpower, torn apart from within and hostile from the outside, faces the most unspeakable of all rounds of elections next year. According to his team, Joe Biden’s will announce his candidacy for a second term the day after tomorrow. So far, all signs indicate that the Democrat will again have Donald Trump as his opponent, whom he chased out of the White House two years ago.

A repeat of the drama of 2020 is not at all what voters want. According to an AP poll this week, only 46 percent of Democrats approve of Biden’s candidacy; 52 percent disapprove. Overall, no less than 73 percent of adults wish that he should no longer compete.

Biden’s numbers are even worse than Trump’s at a comparable time. Last September, two months before the ex-president announced his candidacy, 61 percent of all participants in a poll wanted him to please refrain from doing so.

Biden forgets a lot and constantly trips over his own words

For many, Biden’s age is the main problem.  The president would be 86 years old at the end of his second term. Even at the age of 80, his abilities are noticeably diminishing. His doctor says that he is fit for the most demanding job in the world. The oldest of all U.S. presidents may seem sprightly, but he tipped over with his stationary bike and stumbled multiple times on the stairs to the presidential jet.

He never underwent a cognitive test. His mental weaknesses are now becoming brutally noticeable. Biden’s speech today is audibly more slurred than he was during the last election campaign. He forgets a lot and constantly mis-speaks himself. After speeches, he gets lost on the stage, and again and again he stretches out his hand where no one is waiting. On one occasion, he approached a uniformed man as a Secret Service agent, while he was serving in the Salvation Army.

Biden’s unpredictability is dangerous abroad. Recently, he confused the host country with China in Canada. On several occasions, his statements on the issues of Russia and Taiwan contradicted official policy, so that the White House had to hastily make a correction.

However, the electorate does not notice how bad Biden’s mental fitness really is. With the exception of Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, no US president has given as few press conferences as Joe Biden in 100 years. Unlike Trump, he does not refer to the media as “enemies of the people”, but he treats them as such: he rarely grants interviews; He has never answered the questions of journalists from the “New York Times” or the “Washington Post”.

Biden’s team is keeping the incumbent under wraps for fear of political damage. His advisers can live well with the fact that the president reads speeches from the teleprompter and signs laws, but otherwise only appears shielded.

As an ancient figurehead, Biden inspires confidence and obscures the fact that progressive leftists set the tone in the White House. Secretly directed by them, gigantic spending packages were crammed through and the entire administration was sworn into a radical climate course and a woke redistribution policy that would have been unimaginable under Barack Obama.

Leadership by an invisible Politburo, depending on ideological preference, can please domestically. Abroad, it fails. As an Atlanticist, Biden was able to commit NATO to a resolute defense against Russia’s attack on Ukraine. But indirectly, with the withdrawal debacle in Afghanistan, he encouraged Vladimir Putin to attack. Neither before the start of hostilities nor afterwards did he seriously engage in diplomacy against the war in Eastern Europe.

Trump and Biden enjoy their roles

Meanwhile, the American world order is falling apart. Russia is forging new alliances, taking the helm of the OPEC oil cartel and is spreading its influence in the Middle East. The arch-enemies Iran and Saudi Arabia come to an understanding. Israel stands alone. While China is arming itself and gathering territory and labor markets in the World’s South, Biden’s envoys are handing out reprimands. In the words of a politician from a developing country: “From China we get an airport. From the United States we’re getting a lecture.”

America’s weakness comes from the weakness of its president. His country and the world must be spared four more years of Biden as urgently as the return of the egomaniac Trump. However, both politicians like themselves so much in their roles that they can hardly be dissuaded.

Unless they are forced to do so. Trump could be thrown out of the race by criminal charges, Biden by the dramatically widening scandals surrounding his family’s potentially corrupt foreign business. Undoubtedly, it would be best if the president voluntarily renounced the second term. However, the old man lacks the strength for this decision.