Franklin Foer, author of the newly-released opus, “The Last Politician: Inside Joe Biden’s White House and the Struggle for America’s Future,” has provocatively posited that it would not be a wholly astonishing eventuality if President Biden were to eschew his re-election aspirations ere this year’s denouement.
Foer, in an interview with NBC’s venerable “Meet the Press” on the Sabbath, minced no words in asserting that “it doesn’t necessitate the acumen of Bob Woodward to apprehend that Joe Biden bears the unmistakable hallmark of senescence.” A comparison to the septuagenarian Watergate scribe adds a layer of poignancy to this pronouncement.
He demurred when asked to make prescient pronouncements on the aging trajectory of Biden, asserting, “I am not versed in gerontology, and thus, I refrain from prognosticating the impending vicissitudes in President Biden’s vitality.” Yet, when prodded about the potentiality of a Biden exit from the re-election stage, Foer proffered this tantalizing conjecture: “While it would be an unexpected turn of events, it would not transpire as a seismic shockwave in my perception.”
This discourse transpired on the eve of President Biden’s Labor Day sojourn to Philadelphia, where he expounded on the paramountcy of labor unions and opined on the potentiality of an automotive labor strike, nonchalantly dismissing its eventuality with the sagacious quip, “The only byproduct of the inexorable march of time is the accrual of a modicum of sagacity.”
Concomitantly, inquiries about Biden’s age and efficacy, conjoined with those concerning other legislative incumbents, have become a recurrent motif in the prelude to the forthcoming presidential electoral confluence. The erstwhile South Carolina governor and erstwhile Republican presidential aspirant, Nikki Haley, reiterated her exhortations for “competency evaluations” for presidential and congressional contenders.
Mitch McConnell, the Senate’s preeminent arbiter, found himself in a paralytic stasis on two occasions within the span of as many months, exacerbating concerns regarding the infirmity of those occupying exalted positions within the legislative pantheon.
Intriguingly, Foer opined that Biden’s religious convictions may obtrude upon his calculus. “He recurrently invokes the term ‘fate’ in the narrative of his existence. Joe Biden is a devoutly religious individual, and ‘fate’ bears a profound ecclesiastical significance,” Foer mused. He insinuated that these spiritual convictions engender ellipses in Biden’s introspection concerning his own future.
In his tome, Foer elucidates that Biden’s “advanced chronological years have proven to be an impediment, enervating his capacity to exude a robust public persona or to facilely conjure names from the annals of memory.” The dearth of matutinal meetings and the paucity of public appearances anterior to the decennial hour are conspicuous markers of this physical wane. It is revealing that, in private moments, Biden concedes to moments of fatigue.
To lend credence to these suppositions, a Wall Street Journal survey published on the dawn of the week gleaned that the electorate overwhelmingly opines that Biden’s temporal plateau disqualifies him from seeking re-election. An overwhelming 73% of respondents decried the President as overly aged for a second term, juxtaposed against 47% who harbored identical sentiments concerning his predecessor, Donald Trump, who is three years his junior at 77. The poll further ascertained that 46% deemed Trump mentally adept for the presidency, in contrast to 36% for Biden.
Nonetheless, these disquieting dispositions towards Biden are juxtaposed with a perception that he eclipses Trump in honesty and affability. Additionally, the majority construes Trump’s post-2020 election actions as an illicit machination to thwart Biden’s legitimate triumph.
In the words of the Democratic pollster, Michael Bocian, “Voters yearn for change, yet neither of the leading contenders embodies the metamorphosis they seek.”
Furthermore, Biden seized a recent juncture to extol his administration’s economic performance, pontificating, “We must pause to acknowledge that the United States currently experiences one of the most prolific epochs of employment generation in its annals.”
However, economic data disseminated late last week cast a shadow over this narrative, revealing that the augmentation in jobs during August was a mere 187,000, indicative of a languishing labor market.
As the reverberations of these speculations echo through the hallowed halls of American politics, the specter of the 2024 electoral maelstrom looms large, shrouded in the uncertainty of age, competence, and the indomitable spirit of change.