The problem isn't just his age, it's his decrepitude, both physical and mental. I know people in their 90s who are able to speak clearly at any hour of the day...
You have to be able to win elections at that level, and there's no participation trophies for feel-good runs by someone with a handicap, you just lose.
Unclear, but certainly not 0.
Things like empathy, quick thinking, emotional intelligence, a fresh perspective, broad knowledge of the world, a large vocabulary, and the self-confidence to go with your judgement calls are all involved in telling a single good joke to a crowd.
These are all fantastic things to see in a leader.
A group united towards a stupid purpose can be more effective than individuals acting towards more reasonable purposes. If this is true, you can select for both following (susceptibility) and leading (charisma).
I think to say that Donald Trump is anything but narrowly good at Charisma and personal marketing is a stretch.
I wouldn’t give him an integral to solve but that’s not what a leader is supposed to do either.
I think a major world leader needs more than charisma but it’s one of the first requirements.
What intellectually rigorous activity would you say he has an aptitude in?
Looking at the glowing media coverage of him pre-2015, he seems like a unique business genius.
The truth is probably in between.
Business and marketing aren’t rigorous intellectual activities like math, but they are bloody hard in a different way - even with an inheritance (how many born-rich kids die 100x richer? Almost none). The problems are very fuzzy and open-ended, and frequently don’t even look like a problem.
You can’t consistently solve these problems profitably over many years without some skill.
To be considered charming to a large group of people, like half the USA, you need to be conversant in things that are relevant to all of them. A narrow person can never have a wide appeal.
You're arguing a different point. This isn't about charisma. It's about a baseline level of communication.
I'm a Joe supporter but in recent interviews (like BET) there were two parts where I could not make out what he said after 10 rewinds.
The smart but uncharismatic folks seem better suited to institutional roles where they can guide policy in the right direction without being the public face of the policy. It's not all that different from the distinction between sales and the folks that design/make the product; the groups are complementary but divergent.
The one we live in, it is a hard disqualification, and there's an election in 3 months.
We won't fix everything that is broken with how people select leaders in the next 3 months.
There is clearly something wrong with him that was not in evidence in 2020. Whether it's Parkinson's, senility, 12-day-old jet lag, I don't know. But it's clear that it's hard for him to carry on a conversation, and that is basically the job of a politician.
I'm honestly not sure what we're looking for in a debate, but most presidential debates since I've been a voter are contests to see who can look like they're listening the best while getting back to a rehearsed talking point the fastest. [1] When you combine that with trouble with words, and maybe some over training, it doesn't look good.
Does it mean he has trouble carrying on a conversation in a real setting? I don't know, it's a totally different setting with different expectations. We don't really get a window into that.
[1] Well except that MTV town hall. Pretty sure Bill had no talking points appropriate there.
But now his difficulty seems to come from difficulty understanding what is happening around him. He seemed confused by his surroundings multiple times during that awful debate.
I've seen a lot of Biden supporters pointing to his stutter and speaking difficulties, but his troubles have qualitatively and quantitatively changed, and definitely for the worse.
could you point out the timestamp where his speech impediment is evident? this was 8 years ago and he appears to be a silver-tongued devil
Maybe 10 years ago it was that.
But in the last couple of months, it's like his tongue is not moving right. I literally can't understand some of his sentences now, the syllables are so slurred and garbled.
Over the last few months I've generally defending his gaffs to friends even though I don't like Biden as a politician, because I think that kind of discourse is counterproductive politically and stigmatising socially, which I still feel.
However, I have to say, the recent downward spike in his ability to string a sentence together becomes concerning to me, not so much because I think it primary reflects any cognitive decline per se, but it seems to me like a sign that the pressure of the presidency and the campaign are affecting him in _some_ way that is causing his speech impediment to surface at its worst and most frequent yet. So I would still push back on a lot of what you are saying, but yes, at this point, something is clearly off there to a concerning degree.
However, when someone was previously verbally fluent and then the whole world can see that that person’s fluency has deteriorated, it’s completely reasonable to believe that deterioration of other mental functions is happening as well, as seems to be the case with Biden.
I occasionally call my kids by each others' names. My parents would call me by my brothers' names. This is a running joke in large families. I occasionally in large meetings swap the names of two products we're talking about and have to be corrected. It's just a very low-grade "verbal dyslexia" that means nothing except that the brain isn't a perfectly-wired machine.
* Swapping a name as he’s known to do, with the name of the person who is contextually-adjacent and the other main character?
* Thinking the man he just finished discussing our continual support against Russian expansion, was actually Vladimir Putin himself?
I’m only saying that life-long wors-swapping is not dementia, as so many say.
The current generation reaching voting age would much rather send a text than call so.....
Whatever Trump says can be construed as some sort of 4d chess hidden message because of a cult of personality that has developed around him. He can hint that asylum seekers escaped from mental asylums but his base will not suspect that he may be the one confusing the two words and instead they will just cheer at the grotesque image because that's the kind of politically incorrect thing they want somebody to say (regardless of whether Trump did that on purpose or not).
I have the feeling that whatever Trump will say and will do will never ever be scrutinized by his side in a way that even remotely resembles the scrutiny to switch Biden has to be subjected to.
And that double standard speaks a lot on the troubled times we're living through.
His vocal cords are fine, it's just that the words don't make much sense, which is a pretty big problem in that position.
Dude, you just completely made that up. Certainly every news outlet I recall, from NY Times, WaPo and CNN to Fox News and the WSJ were all running a ton of articles questioning Biden's fitness for another term. None of them were "boldly proclaiming" anything.
Even the Democratic Party has given up on the far-fetched excuses. It’s time to surrender to the evidence. That example is just one out of dozens.
Anyone who thinks that Biden got confused and thought he was in a press conference with Vladimir Putin (!!) is just spouting nonsense.
That said, it's pretty obvious a lot of energy and fire that Biden previously had is no longer present. Or at least very inconsistently present.
the extreme change is worrisome. i mean is this him now? will it keep deteriorating? why would anyone think it wont. how much of a medical concern will be 1 year later. 2 3? this is what people are concerned with
2010, "Joe Biden, the vice-president who keeps putting his foot in it": https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/jun/28/joe-biden-vice...
Those were just the top two results in Google for "biden vice president gaffe", limiting the date to before 2016.
I mean, it's probably gotten worse, although I can't really judge that. But it's certainly not a new thing. I'm not saying he's not too old and tired, I'm just saying that merely the mixing up of a name alone really isn't a sign of incompetence.
The doublespeak from the Republican side regarding Biden's capabilities has been, frankly, astonishing.
That said, it's infuriating when you have an opponent that can literally say whatever he wants however unintelligible it may be and his cult-like followers will just find the meaning kn what he said. The double standard is astonishing.
But yeah obviously there certainly are better candidates than Biden to run for president. Why he or she hasn't been found in 2020 eludes me.
Well we had the 2020 primaries. Bernie and Warren were too left to win a general election. Pete Buttigieg won Iowa, got 2nd in New Hampshire, but only cancelled the campaign after South Carolina, once it dawned that the South has too much of a quiet problem of Buttigieg being gay and preferring Biden simply because he was Obama VP. Without those sad facts, we could've had Buttigieg winning 2020 and 2024.
Yeah, just three days ago, praising Hannibal Lecter, or remember "covfefe" from a few years back? Or the QAnon bunch where some people managed to assemble millions of people [1] by essentially doing "tea leaves predictions" on Trump speeches?
There is no equivalent to that level of derangedness on the Democrat side, not even close.
[1] https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/qanon-groups-have-mil...
Meanwhile, early this month, Biden called himself the first black woman to serve with a black president, as well as referred to "vice president Trump" when apparently talking about Harris.
That one was a response to "and his cult-like followers will just find the meaning kn what he said", because that is precisely what QAnon was/is: a bunch of people poring over Trump speeches and every tiny utterance of anyone in his circle to find "hidden meanings" like alleged raids on "pedos".
> Meanwhile, early this month, Biden called himself the first black woman to serve with a black president, as well as referred to "vice president Trump" when apparently talking about Harris.
He misspeaks and needs to correct himself. Yes. That's completely undeniable.
But hell, listen to a Trump speech and to a Biden speech. Trump is just a plain stream-of-consciousness braindump all the time, Biden at least generally manages to stick to the prompt.
Unfortunately, Trump has what I call the "entertainer instinct": he knows exactly and most especially instinctively how to entertain masses, how to make pictures and quotes. The best example is him getting shot - 99.999% of people would have fled, he raises his fist and yells "fight".
And in a political climate where it's not facts but pure and utter showmanship that wins an election, that's a problem.
Being ugly is a disqualifying trait for getting a job as a supermodel.
Being unfit is a disqualifying trait for being an Olympic athlete.
Being unable to stay awake and say coherent sentences is a disqualifying trait for being the president of the most powerful nation on earth.
Being black or latino is a disqualifying trait for playing a Roman emperor in a movie — which is why Netlix will surely try, because they’re unable to comprehend what the problem even is, and why their “equality” is groan-inducing.
PS: If I was a US citizen, I would vote for AOC not because of her sex or race but because neither of those influence my decision. Do they influence yours?
A latino man could almost certainly fit, though.
Given a person playing a Roman Emperor is acting in a role not laboring as a ruler, consider that:
The emperors Trajan, Hadrian and Marcus Aurelius -- among Rome's best and wisest rulers -- and the poet Seneca all were of Spanish origin.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/horizon/june9...
The Four African Emperors were Septimius Severus, Clodius Albinus, Marcus Macrinus and Aemilianus.
Being born in Roman Hispania isn't the same as being "of Spanish origin" or "latinx". Being born in Africa doesn't make you black. Elon Musk is the richest African in the world.
If Shaq had been born in China, would he be a good candidate to portray first sovereign Emperor of China?
A black bear born in the arctic isn't a polar bear.
"When Biden stumbles over words, we question his state of mind; when Trump acts like a deranged street preacher, it’s … well, Tuesday. If Biden had suggested setting up migrants in a fight club,[1] he’d be out of the race already; Trump does it, and the country (as well as many in the media) shrugs. "
* Tom Nichols, https://archive.ph/XcMbP / https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2024/07/the-...
> “Did anyone ever hear of Dana White?” Trump asked during his speech at the Faith and Freedom Coalition’s “Road to Majority” conference in Washington. “… I said, ‘Dana, I have an idea. Why don’t you set up a migrant league of fighters and have your regular league of fighters, and then you have the champion of your league — these are the greatest fighters in the world — fight the champion of the migrants.’ I think the migrant guy might win; that’s how tough they are. He didn’t like that idea too much.”
* https://archive.ph/cQ4KA / https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/06/22/trump-chr...
And it's not like Trump is that much younger than Biden.
(A contributing factor is that he actually Has been misrepresented a few times by the media - the “bloodbath” comment was very clearly about the auto industry in context, so the right feels rightly aggrieved and the left & media lose credibility.)
Warning, explicit language: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JhkZMxgPxXU
The fact Trump has not changed from acting like a 'deranged street preacher' isn't exactly a point for him…
But looking across the pond, it doesn't look like Americans agree with me. :-/
Fun times, I guess.
On the other hand, American politics is so fickle and vain that even a minor gaffe on camera can doom a political career (see the "Dean Scream.") Although this standard only seems to apply to Democrats, it's still a factor. What really killed Hillary Clinton's chances wasn't systemic misogyny, or the email leaks, but her expression. She had a memeable crazy face, and that became her entire identity for many Americans. Now "Sleepy Joe" is the identity of Joe Biden.
The only question now is, what will be the meme that they deploy against Kamala Harris? I don't think the tried and true "probably a pedophile" or "crippling dementia" options are going to work, and "blood drinking satanic priestess" has probably worn out its welcome. They'll probably go "crypto-muslim" like they did with Obama.
edit: looks like they're going with "all of this is an attempted coup." A bold strategy by the insurrectionist party, going back to the "stolen election" well, but it seems to be a perennial favorite. Let's see if it works for them.
Is a younger leader better? Possibly. Speaking as a non-American, I have to note that, when Americans vote for a President, they're not just voting for one guy. They're voting for a guy who will select the entire white house staff. Biden surrounded himself with highly competent people with good ideas and they're why he's been an effective President. Obama could have easily done worse if he'd been less lucky with his staff selection. An old president who selects good staff can be effective.
Trump did worse during his previous term and would be objectively worse in his next precisely because he'll surround himself with family and yes-men. When staffing, a good leader tries to make himself the dumbest person in the room. Biden did that. Trump never will.
Case in point: The VP. In a Biden vs Trump contest, it was a very real possibility that either of their VP's would have to take over during their terms. Biden had Harris as his VP, and she's clearly ready to do the job. Trump chose a rookie senator yes-man with a profound lack of principles for his VP. The thought of Vance becoming President in 2026 or 2027 should terrify people.
Harris has been a ghost for 4 years, after dismally losing the 2020 primary, and being selected ostensibly because of her group identity.
Harris has at least been a formidable prosecuter and brings bone fide proven legal talent to the role, not to mention the $8,000 US plus Trump and his family have donated towards her election since 2011.
Exactly zero of them have the demanding job of a president.
But please, people, do not compare the average person in their 80's to what this man has to do daily.
Just alone entering a war room and giving an order to bomb a place, or watching the raw videos of war (which we luckily don't get access to) is something you don't come back from. This is not an average person, and he was doing OK after all.
However, he objectively got older. That's it. No coming back from that either...
at least i know my korean gpa has. man is crippled and vocal cords basically non existent due to his job there. but man is so sharp and smart mentally its actually shocking.
but bidens has had serious brain surgeries. that alone should have disqualified him from even running imo regardless of how his term went
Seriously, the stress he went through in the last 15-20 years, that's some s*. He even lost his son in 2015.
This guy has crazy good genes. And it sucks that people make fun of him. He should not go as a "joke". People should have some respect and understanding for him.
What a word, TIL
At least now we’ll likely not have both major party candidates be too old for office.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/probability-of-dying-by-a...
Can't really deliver on your campaign promises if you're more likely than not to be dead before the end of your term.
I’m not comparing him to Trump btw. Just explaining why I’m perfectly happy that the dems are replacing Biden with someone else.
That comment was posted by 'readthenotes1.
Biden literally cannot walk down two steps unassisted.
Meanwhile Trump appears to be bullet proof.
You can disagree on plenty of policy, but no fair minded person could possibly think he’s mentally or physically more fit than Trump.
Absolutely he’s more physically fit. I don’t think Biden would have survived being tackled by the Secret Service agents. That alone would have broken all kinds of bones.
And as far as stamina goes, Trump regularly gives hour plus standing speeches. Do you really think Biden could stand in the hot sun for an hour?
Here’s Biden unable to descend two (2!) stairs by himself: https://nypost.com/2024/06/28/us-news/jill-biden-helps-joe-o...
You’re seriously going to tell me that guy is more physically fit than Trump?
This is anecdotal, but it reminds me of my grandfather before he died. He had always been able to run on a treadmill and lift weights; then, he got cancer, and his health deteriorated to the point that he began to need a walker to get around, until he became bedridden and died.
[0]: https://www.msn.com/en-ph/news/other/joe-biden-goes-for-bike...
"Unfit for office" (Esper) "The greatest threat to democracy that we've ever seen." (Cobb) "he failed at being the president when we needed him to be the president" (mulvaney) "doesn't like to read, doesnt read briefing reports." (Tillerson) "absense of leadership, really anti-leadership" (McMaster) "wannabe dictator" (Kelly) "he shouldn't be near the oval office" (Barr) "a person who admires autocrats & murderous dictators. A person that has nothing but contempt for our democratic institutions, the Constitution, and rule of law" (Kelly) "God help us [if we's reelected]." (Kelly)
And simply, "he's an effing moron" (Tillerson).
Biden has always been a little weird with his vocal stutter, but he makes good points. He knows what's going on. He can talk to issues and hold a point. Trump's logic as he gets up on the podium & drunk uncle rambles is terrifying, both mean and vindictive when coherent but often just totally space case weirdo verbal diaherria. He's never been sharp. He's never been interested in the world, has always lived in his own head & it's only gotten worse & less & less intelligible. He's an effing moron and a mean nasty one at that. Biden is aging yes but he's a put together intelligent engaged listening person who reads his damned briefings & is engaged & interested & has ongoingly shown ability to go on talk shows & rallys & be strong, to talk intelligently to issues, to handle deep conversations well, & make sharp cases.
You don't see anything like this insult against character & intelligence against Biden. I think Biden is sharp, but even if you disagree, at least he started with a full deck of cards and some decency & respect for democracy. The other guy?
I think Bob Woodward really sums it up: "the president has the understanding of a fifth or sixth grader."
> I think Biden is sharp
and also delusional.
So do a very notable fraction of the people who worked for him!
That’s a weird way to say “Even his own party is shooting at him.”
That was incredibly iconic and that picture will be in the historic books, and IMHO, alongside a biography of him as our 47th POTUS.
Yep, next to all of the other failed assassinations.
looking it up, we haven't had a near assassination since Reagan (how... well, poetic isn't the word I want to use). Probably a bit too recent for history books to record at my time. The other presidents who had near assassinations did eventually become assassinated.