Joe Biden is unfit for the presidency. He is unfit right now. It is not that he is incapable of campaigning effectively over the next four months or of providing presidential leadership over the next four years. His current mental deficit was manifest in the recent debate. His obvious physical deficits reinforce the assessment of overall infirmity. He walks like a stick man and stumbles and falls regularly.
Biden’s unfitness is being processed as a partisan issue. Democrats are agonizing over his candidacy. They worry that he cannot campaign effectively. Yet the real worry is that he cannot govern effectively – not just in a second term, but for the next six months until Inauguration.
If Biden is unfit as a candidate, he is surely unfit as an incumbent president. It is far easier to campaign, repeating slogans and delivering the same stump speech at virtually every stop, than it is to lead the most powerful nation on earth in uncertain and dangerous times. Biden is trying to salvage his position with an active campaign schedule, where voters can “touch me, poke me, ask me questions,” as he has said. That is not the test. The real test is poking by foreign adversaries.
With partial realization of this huge distinction, he gave a press conference after the recent NATO summit. It was supposed to demonstrate his ability to handle the issues and challenges of his office. The Wall Street Journal summed up his performance “he lost his train of thought numerous times, bailing out of sentence after sentence with his now trademark ‘anyway.’ We counted 10.”
Yet, Biden has been attempting to multitask, both running for re-election and leading the nation as the incumbent. Democrats are only gradually acknowledging his inadequacies as a candidate, which is the far lesser current challenge. They need to embrace the reality of his deficiencies as the current office holder and demand that he resign.
As commander in chief, the president is deeply involved in two raging wars, in Ukraine and in Gaza, both of which could escalate quite easily into wider conflicts. China is ramping up pressure on Taiwan. The U.S. economy is in uncharted waters, running on unsustainable levels of federal deficit spending, fueled by federal borrowing that now requires $1 trillion in annual interest payments and mounting. Much can happen in six months.
Confronting this reality will bring clarity to confused Democrats in determining their way forward. The Constitution shows the way. The vice president becomes president. There is nothing to debate. The sooner the inevitable transfer of power occurs, the better. This is not to endorse Kamala Harris in any way, but simply to follow the Constitution.
President Harris does not automatically imply Harris as the party standard-bearer. She could serve a six-month interregnum, while another Democrat faces off versus Donald Trump and until the winner is inaugurated.
Resignation would not resolve the question of Democrat leadership going into the coming election. Yet, selection of a standard bearer for the Democrats is an entirely partisan decision. The Democrats can do whatever they want, once Biden withdraws.
Soon a delegation of party power brokers and Democratic elders will visit Biden to deliver the inevitable ultimatum. They must demand not only his withdrawal, but his resignation – for the good of the nation.
Biden does have leverage. He can say that he will go only if accorded the right to select his successor, with those elders agreeing to extend some deference to his selection. Surely, they will not let Biden hand-pick an unchallenged successor. Yet, whomever Biden might anoint would have pole position in whatever formal selection process Democrats settle upon.
Democrats should indulge Biden’s wishes as an essential means of encouraging him to withdraw as candidate and resign as the incumbent sooner than later. Resignation is paramount. His continuation in office is a clear and present threat to the Republic. His family and his inner circle should prevail upon him to resign immediately.
The inner circle would not lose place or influence, since it is inconceivable that Harris would change the team for so short a period. Biden advisers would become Harris advisers, acquiring a legitimacy that is now in question. For its part, his family should realize that the longer Biden persists in defiance of the inevitable, the greater his ultimate humiliation.
Red Jahncke is a nationally recognized columnist, who writes about politics and policy. His columns appear in numerous national publications, such as The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, USA Today, The Hill, Issues & Insights and National Review as well as many Connecticut newspapers.