‘THE BEST BIDEN EVER.’ On his MSNBC program Wednesday, former Republican Rep. Joe Scarborough launched an impassioned and aggressive defense of President Joe Biden — specifically, of Biden’s mental fitness to serve a second term as president. Scarborough’s performance was an attempt to show that the best defense is a good offense: In Scarborough’s view, the 81-year-old Biden is not only not declining cognitively, but he’s absolutely the best he’s ever been. And to majorities of voters, both Democrats and Republicans, who believe the president is not up to a second term, Scarborough had a simple message: “F*** you.”
Scarborough said he had “spent a couple of hours with Joe Biden, sitting, talking, going around the world as far as talking issues, talking the economy, talking inflation, talking.” After those discussions, Scarborough came to believe that Biden “might misplace a word here or there” but is in fact really sharp. “I undersold him when I said he was cogent,” Scarborough said. “He’s far beyond cogent. In fact, he’s better than he’s ever been intellectually, analytically. Because he’s been around for 50 years.”
“Start your tape right now because I’m about to tell you the truth,” Scarborough continued. “And f*** you if you can’t handle the truth. This version of Biden, intellectually, analytically, is the best Biden ever. Not a close second. And I’ve known him for years. … If it weren’t the truth, I wouldn’t say it.”
So what to think? Scarborough said he is basing his view on face-to-face discussion with Biden. He did not offer any more details, but talking to journalists and activists behind the scenes is part of the presidency. So you can’t discount Scarborough’s case even if you disagree with it. But public appearances are also part of the presidency, and millions of people have seen Biden struggle through the basics of presidential performance. It is just a fact that many in Biden’s own party are concerned about his condition.
Here’s something to consider about Scarborough. The Morning Joe cast and indeed all of MSNBC have long been fanatically anti-Trump. Biden is now what stands between the nation and another Trump presidency. So to play armchair psychiatrist: They feel a deep need to believe in Biden, to suppress doubts about Biden, and to declare that he is not only not weak but strong, strong, strong.
Another partisan who went into television, George Stephanopoulos, described the process in a memoir of his time as a top campaign and White House aide to President Bill Clinton. In that memoir, All Too Human, Stephanopoulos related the experience in the 1992 campaign when a woman, Gennifer Flowers, claimed she had had an affair with Clinton. Clinton denied it. (It was in fact true.) When Flowers produced a tape of Clinton talking with her on the phone, Stephanopoulos instantly decided it was fake. (It was in fact genuine.) Stephanopoulos became a Clinton attack dog against any and all suggestion that the presidential candidate had had an affair with Flowers.
Later, when he learned that Clinton had been lying, Stephanopoulos asked himself why he believed so deeply in Clinton’s lie. In All Too Human, he got pretty philosophical about it, and described it this way:
A dynamic had already started that would repeat itself many times in the years ahead — one explained well by Reinhold Niebuhr: “Frantic orthodoxy,” he wrote, “is never rooted in faith but in doubt. It is when we are not sure that we are doubly sure.” I now had doubts about Clinton, had seen his flaws up close, which caused me to focus even more intently on his strengths and believe even more fervently in his ideas. … I didn’t want our enemies to win. They’d stop at nothing to defeat him, so nothing would stop me from defending him. Now I was a true true believer.
So now, in this armchair psychoanalysis scenario, Scarborough cannot bear the thought that his enemies, the Trumpists, might win. They’d stop at nothing to defeat Biden, so nothing will stop Scarborough from defending him. That includes making a preposterous case to deny something millions of people can see with their own eyes.
Again, that’s armchair psychoanalysis. But it might be simpler than that. On Wednesday, the X account End Wokeness posted a video of Scarborough’s discussion with the message: “Joe Scarborough goes full state TV.” Indeed, claiming that a leader who appears to be on his last legs is in fact incredibly vigorous is perfectly consistent with the denial of reality we have seen many times in government-run media.
There’s one last possibility. Scarborough didn’t exactly say Biden is super sharp. He said Biden is the best he, Biden, has ever been, intellectually and analytically. In light of that, remember the words of former Defense Secretary and CIA Director Robert Gates, who in 2014 wrote that Biden “has been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.” Certainly Biden’s handling of some of the key events of his presidency has done nothing to prove Gates wrong. In that sense, it might be fair to argue that Biden is as wrong as he has ever been. He could arguably be “the best Biden ever,” but that still wouldn’t be very good.
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