Ever since the Biden-Trump debate on 27 June made clear to the 51 million Americans who watched it that the President suffers from impaired mental capacity, pundits have seized on historic and literary analogies to illustrate their interpretation of Biden’s decline.
A favourite comparison has been King Lear, whose collapse into dotage has been likened to that of Biden.
On the whole, Lear, at least in the later acts of the play, shows greater self-awareness about his own cognitive failings than Biden has yet to do:
“I am a very foolish fond old man,
“Fourscore and upwards, not an hour more or less,
“And, to deal plainly,
“I fear I am not in my perfect mind.”
Now that Biden has agreed to step down as Democratic presidential candidate, he is being engulfed by tributes to his self-sacrificing act by the big Democratic Party and media panjandrums who, only hours earlier, were broadcasting his senility.
None of them are likely to use the King Lear analogy again, which is a pity because the play contains some useful pointers for them as they grapple with the aftermath of Biden’s abdication as presidential candidate.
Lear got into trouble because he divided up his kingdom, handing its parts over to his daughters Goneril and Regan, who expressed their undying love for him as he did so. Cordelia ruled herself out as a beneficiary of regime change by refusing to join in her sisters’ accolades. Soon after, Goneril and Regan discover to their dismay that their father has no plans to disappear from their lives and is intending, together with a large staff, to come to stay alternately with each of them in turn.
The Democratic Party and their likely presidential nominee Kamala Harris have a similar political transition problem as that faced by Goneril and Regan. Biden may have ruled himself out as presidential candidate after coming under huge pressure from party leaders, donors and media, but he will remain US President for the next six months.
Much of the electoral campaign will revolve around him and his mental health or lack of it: Republicans will focus their attack on asking why, if his mental deterioration is so great, should he remain the chief US decision-maker on wars in Ukraine and Gaza and with his finger on the nuclear button? They will ask: who in the White House knew that Biden’s powers of judgement had been significantly eroded over at least the last 18 months, according to multiple witnesses?
These questions are fair enough, but such is the polarisation of US politics between supporters and opponents of Donald Trump that they were never investigated objectively by the US media during the years Biden was in the White House.
Jibes about Biden’s increasingly visible mental fog by Trump and Fox News were dismissed as right wing propaganda by Democrats. When polls showed that Biden’s senility was an important factor for voters, the Democratic leadership concealed his decline. The Democratic primary system was manipulated to give Biden a clear run. There were to be no revelatory debates with other Democratic candidates. When one rival candidate did emerge in the shape of Robert F Kennedy Jr, he was quickly marginalised as a maverick.
“A little over a year ago when I entered this race, I predicted that President Biden suffered from a degenerative problem that was not going to improve,” RFK Jr said on Sunday after Biden pulled out of the race. “And that it would make it impossible for him to govern effectively.” He complained that all the mainline Democratic-leaning television stations and newspapers treated him as a pariah for mentioning the forbidden topic of the president’s mental health.
Biden may no longer be a candidate, but he is still in the White House, something which greatly affects not only the Democrats but the entire world. Simply put, a man whose brain is not functioning properly remains the most powerful man in the world, in charge of the nuclear codes and US foreign policy at a time when wars rage in Ukraine and Gaza. It is bizarre that this frightening fact is receiving so little public attention.
Another question the Democrats will seek to avoid answering is how far these seemingly endless wars have continued, unhindered by US diplomatic activity, because of Biden’s mental degeneration dating back several years.
It is much in the interests of the Democratic leadership to play all this down, though it leaves the US effectively leaderless for half a year. They will want to make the transition from Biden to Harris as candidates as frictionless as possible. They will portray the President as a happy warrior, whose time in office was full of rich achievements, and who is finally sacrificing his political future in the interests of party and country. I doubt if the Democrats will be able to get away with this as the Republicans ask how long he has been unable to think straight and how much Harris knew about his condition.
An ageing Biden’s continued presence in the White House will inhibit the 59-year-old Harris’s ability to turn the tables on the 78-year-old Trump on the age question, though his incoherence is often a close second to Biden’s. On the whole, the Democrats would do well to learn from Goneril and Regan’s misjudgement in believing that what Lear did post-abdication did not much matter.
Any heir-apparent, which in this case will most likely be Kamala Harris, will seek to balance delicately between claiming credit for the successes of the old regime while distancing themselves from its failures. This will be especially difficult for her as vice president with Biden still in charge of running the country. Given her own lack of popularity, and with the Republicans ahead in the polls in key states, her chances of winning the presidency without some very lucky break are slim.
This is particularly so since the attempt to assassinate Trump makes it impossible to focus the Democratic campaign on demonising him. Nor will it be credible to portray the Maga Republicans as harbingers of chaos and doom in contrast to the stability and calm of Democratic administration.
Worst of all, however, from the Democratic point of view, Biden will remain a central issue of the campaign, even if he is no longer the candidate.