I know. No one asked me.

It's time to speak up, even if no one asked me. After listening to Biden's ABC interview last night and reading the interview transcript this morning, I'm more than slightly concerned about the capabilities of Biden to process information and communicate it clearly to others. I'm an editor, so I'm a little picky about effective word usage and the continuity of the story line. I thought Biden’s word choice skills seemed diminished, even for speech, and the complexity of his ideas seemed much too simple for a man who's supposed to be managing all the tigers in the metaphorical global circus. In addition, his sense of responsibility to people living in the United States seemed overshadowed x1000 by his perception of the importance of his international role and obligations -- an imbalance that seemed to emphasize his connections to the past over his role in the future. 

The interview's purpose was to reveal the true/unscripted/unteleprompted character of the man whose behavioral capabilities have recently come under scrutiny because they didn't meet the media's and his political party's expectations during a 90-minute debate with his opponent. Pundits said in advance of the interview that the president's conversation with a respected journalist would reassure voters that the president was fine. Or not. It didn't. Biden's demeanor was aptly defensive from the start, and many of his responses were similarly framed. He maintained that position from start to finish, much like the cranky old man who yells at the neighbor kids to get off his lawn. If this is his true character, then it is problematic, in my opinion, for what it reveals about the deleterious effects of aging and stress on mental capacity, and for what it conveyed about Biden's reluctance/defiance/denial to acknowledge the significance of these effects. 

Fox News and others have criticized Biden for stating "I’ll feel as long as I gave it my all and I did the goodest job as I know I can do, that’s what this is about" in response to the question "And if you stay in, and Trump is elected and everything you’re warning about comes to pass, how will you feel in January?" While the word "goodest" was a conspicuous gaffe (and has now been edited out of the transcript by ABC), targeting a single word is too easy, too lazy. What's significant here is how Biden's response focused on a sense of intensely personal vindication for maintaining status quo, as if he were a Little Leaguer who knew he would get a shiny little participation trophy at the end of the game even if he didn't hit a single ball. Missing was any forward-looking observation about the importance of rallying the party and the public to do everything they can to prevent the new president from enacting policies that will plunge this country into an abyss. Missing was the sense of connection to local, national and world leaders who view the United States as the strongest nation in the world and how he, as an elder statesman, might figure into that scene. Nope. It was just Biden batting the best he could in the big election game of 2024, and if striking out were to happen, then oh, well, trophies all around. 

Biden gave too many answers like this during this interview. He introduced several campaign-related economic, social and internationally political talking points, but then his remarks looped and wound themselves around each other and strangled his original intention or the idea itself to death. Take, for example, his remark about the computer chip:

     “I’m the guy that got Japanese to expand their budget. I’m the — so I mean, these — and, for example, when I decided we used to have 40 percent of computer chips. We invented the chip, the little chip, the computer chip. It’s in everything from cellphones to weapons. And so, we used to have 40 percent, and we’re down to virtually nothing. So I get in the plane, against the advice of everybody, and I fly to South Korea. I convince them to invest in the United States, billions of dollars. Now we have tens of billions of dollars being invested in the United States making us back in a position — we’re going to own that industry again. We have, I mean, I — I just — anyway. I’m — I don’t want to take too much credit. I have a great staff."

This explanation has a lot of great visual content, but the ideas are so disorganized it's hard to understand whether there's a point to the story. This was a classic senior moment, a brain fart, a “What was I going to say? Oh, never mind” attempt to explain something that the brain could not sustain. This was a mess. If this is how conversations unravel at the G7 summit, then something is wrong. 

Similarly, I had concerns about Biden's answers to the questions about his willingness to take independently administered cognitive and/or neurological tests: "Look. I have a cognitive test every single day. Every day I have that test. Everything I do. You know, not only am I campaigning, but I’m running the world." Forgive me, but this sounds like the rationale of a kid who thinks he can drive a car just because his feet can reach the pedals. I don’t want a president who believes he can manage the government of the country just because he can sit comfortably at the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office. 

Make no mistake; I don’t want Trump to return to the presidency. The country has already had an unhealthy dose of exposure to his practice of bad decision-making and even worse leadership, and his mental abilities are broken in very sick and dangerous ways. On the other hand, I am unnerved by the possibility of returning a president to the White House who thinks every day is a cognitive test and that he should be allowed to lead based on his past record, his presumed rapport with international leaders, and the support of a great staff. One of the questions in a cognitive test involves being able to draw a clock face with the hands positioned thusly to reflect a specific hour and minute. Both candidates are falling short in their ability to tell time.