Is Biden a Victim of Elder Abuse

Biden soared on the first night of the convention, but he performed abysmally in his most recent debate with Trump – elder abuse might explain his poor showing at the debate

By

David Gottfried

During his debate with Trump, Biden performed poorly.   Many of us thought he was senile.   However, on the first night of the convention, Biden was nothing short of magnificent.   Why.

People on the left purport to care about the infirm, the oppressed and the marginalized.    However, sometimes we are not the least bit patient with people who are wrinkled or gray or wouldn’t be a good bet to win a marathon.  Sometimes we want to dispose of them. 

Was Biden’s Apparent Senility Not Senility at All  but rather the Result of Demolished Self-Confidence induced by being badgered about his age for at least four years 

I suppose that a fair to hefty number of Democrats scanned Joe Biden’s face for a split second and snottily concluded that he was simply an old, white man and therefore should be sent out to pasture, or the glue factory.  For some bogus leftists (To me a true leftist wouldn’t have a  persecutory and gratuitously cruel  sensibility) it is a put down to say that someone is an old white man because such a being, supposedly, bears all of the grievous sins of white people, males and elderly people.  For some bogus leftists, old white men are something to dispose of.      

Also, in this hyper visual country, in which everything is photographed and nothing is read, in which looks are the whole enchilada in entertainment (And politics is a form of entertainment.   Donald Trump is like an aggressive, violent, male version of Joan Rivers), in which even lots of men are submitting to plastic surgery because they cannot tolerate their faces, Joe Biden almost frightens people.  He looks like our grandfather, and contemporary America finds things like grandfathers almost frightening as if tumor-inducing moth balls will pop out of their beards.    

Since 2020, people have been fixated on the notion that Biden is a fossil who is at best a source of amusement for young and chic people and at worst is a carrier of all the ancient bigotries of someone of his advanced age.  Perhaps Biden’s poor verbal performance has been nothing but a manifestation of a wounded, maligned and persecuted ego.   After four years of being treated as someone who is probably too frail and flummoxed to occupy the oval office, his self-doubt may have grown until it gobbled up his gumption.  Furthermore, his childhood history of stuttering, and all the traumas he experienced as a child because of stuttering, must have been reawakened and have come back to assault him because of his poor debate with Trump and the masses in the media clamoring for his funeral

Self-confidence is such a basic prerequisite to the use of one’s intelligence  that some intelligence tests gauge intellectual ability after it has been assailed by emotional stress.    For example, the Wechsler IQ test yields three IQ scores: 1) The verbal score which supposedly gauges raw intelligence before it is compromised by emotional stress. (Footnote 1);  2)  the performance score which supposedly measures one’s intelligence when stress is applied; and the 3)  full score, which is roughly halfway between the verbal and performance scores.     

On the first night of the convention, Biden was downright amazing.  He spoke forcefully, coherently and passionately.   Of course, that venue was tailor-made for Joe Biden.   The convention gushed with accolades to Joe Biden, and the cocoon of massaging love reached an apogee of adoration when his daughter spoke and delivered a tribute to Joe Biden that surpassed all superlatives in singing his praises.  Because his ego had been buttressed, Biden was able to soar.    

Rapid thought might help one on the SATs or on Jeopardy, but most presidents are not required to think with lightning speed

When the obnoxious talking heads of the press discussed Biden’s mental abilities, their discussion, like their discussion of everything else, was shallow.  They simply asked whether he still had smarts or if  he had lost them.  They completely forgot that different types of intelligence are needed in different situations. 

Of course, Biden’s ability to think rapidly might have declined considerably over the years.  However, intellectual speed is not a president’s paramount need.   A president doesn’t have to be quick with a gun or a car or a plane.  He will have to make earth shattering decisions, but whether he will have to inaugurate military action, in a given conflict, will more likely transpire, and demand a decision, in days.   Over several days, Biden will recall most of what he needs to recall, and given his many years in government he might be able to marshal more facts and incidents which bear upon his decision.  No, Biden might not recall an arcane fact in a nano-second, and he may lose to a nettlesome nerd on Jeopardy, but when he must decide whether he should support an expansion of the earned income tax credit, he won’t have to decide that issue in a day.

Intelligence is not Wisdom

Also, there is something more important that brain power:  Wisdom.   For example, our policy in Vietnam was created and implemented by one of the most brilliant men in the United States government, Robert Mc Namara.   Bob Mc Namara was a genius in quantifying data, and he could tell you how many bullets, hand grenades and spoonfulls of rice the Vietcong had, and how much merchandise we had, and he could easily conclude that we had more goods than our adversaries and therefore would win.  

But Mc Namara was oblivious to things IQ tests, or tests for senility, don’t measure.  These fancy tests can’t measure our ability to size up another person and determine if that guy really is an ally, is someone we can depend on or someone who will bolt for the communists.  If Mc Namara had any ability to size a person up, he would have realized that our supposed Vietnamese allies hated us and that to them we were nothing but  a continuation of French colonial rule

Of course, a good president must have his wits about him when he meets with foreign leaders.  However, this doesn’t entail speaking the King’s English or arguing with the polemical power of an Oxford Don.   When guys get together – and most gatherings with foreign leaders are generally composed of men – they rarely care about the diction, coherence or vocabulary of one’s discussion.   Guys, even if they are world leaders, are more apt to grunt and say fuck you during negotiations.  Indeed, when JFK, in his negotiations with Khrushchev in Vienna in 1961, tried to make an intelligent point, Khrushchev reputedly proceeded to shout histrionically about war, speaking bombastically about tanks and planes and bigger and bigger bombs.  Kennedy was startled and terrified by Khruschev, who realized that he had terrified Kennedy and took advantage of Kennedy’s terror by erecting the Berlin Wall only two months after the Vienna conference.

When Trump met with Putin, he did not have anyone present to take notes or to record the meeting.  That’s an omission – and a flagrant sin – that Biden would never commit.  Our government still does not know what Trump said to Putin, about this nation, behind our back.

The Professional Virtues of Playing Poker   

When I hear people talk about the intelligence needed to be a good president, I cannot help but recall what I learned about the qualities required to become a good lawyer.      

When I was still in College, I witnessed a symposium of sorts on those attributes of a college education that would nourish a good legal career.  Some speakers thought that it was essential that one study lots of politics and government since laws are a creature of government.  Some speakers thought that a pre legal education should be heavy on economics, since lawyers most often fight over money.   A brighter speaker said that a really shrewd lawyer will be able to think outside the box, and be sufficiently imaginative to argue that his client should be free of certain prohibitions, and that this sort of imaginative thinking will be undermined if one crams one’s head with too many damn facts that makes the world and its rules seems static, stagnant and inflexible.  Finally, the last speaker said that the best preparation for law school was playing lots of poker.   

I agree with the last speaker.  I think the best preparation for law, or for the presidency, is playing poker.  

Footnote 1: It is not a test of one’s facility in using language.  It is called the verbal score only because it is comprised of questions in which answers are given orally and not with a pencil or through the manipulation of blocks.   For example, I once took the Wechsler, and one of the questions that comprised my verbal score asked me how the numbers 8 and 125 were most alike.  I correctly answered that they were both perfect cubes as 2 X 2 X 2 equals 8 and 5 X 5 X 5 equals 125