If my elderly relatives acted like Joe Biden, I wouldn’t want them going to the shops, let alone a Nato summit
TODAY Sir Keir Starmer will meet with US President Joe Biden at the Nato summit in Washington.
As these events always are, it will be an important indicator of the future relationship between Britain and its number one ally.
Commentators will be looking for subtle signs of warmth or coolness between the two leaders, in their body language and their words.
But even more, the world’s eyes will be on Biden’s state of health.
Ever since last month’s presidential debate, it has become painfully clear that something is not right with the US President.
His awkward, stiff gait might be written off as a sign of old age and of no great relevance to his ability to discharge his duties as the most powerful man on Earth and de facto leader of the Western World.
But his frequent inability to string his thoughts together into intelligible sentences is a very different matter.
Stumbling over words
Biden’s attempt to debate with Donald Trump was painful to watch.
At one point he screwed up his eyes while trying to answer a question on tax and healthcare, before uttering the nonsensical words, “We finally beat Medicare”.
Trump retorted that he could not make out what Biden had said and he did not think Biden knew what he had said either.
There had been plenty of rumours about Biden’s condition before the debate, along with numerous clips on social media showing him stumbling over his words or seeming to wander aimlessly off stage at speaking events.
For weeks, Democrats had tried to suppress it all, claiming it was an illusion created by skilled editing from the President’s political enemies.
But there was no disguising his performance in a live TV debate.
The White House first told us the President had a cold, and then added that he was suffering from jet lag — an excuse which fell flat when it was pointed out that Biden had not travelled from Camp David in the six days before the debate.
What’s more, it is far from the first time the President has stumbled in the way he did.
According to Carl Bernstein, the reporter who helped break the Watergate scandal in the 1970s, Biden has demonstrated similar behaviour 15 to 20 times over the past few months — where he freezes, unable to express himself.
True, Biden has managed to get through speeches without much trouble in the days since the debate.
But then that is so often the case when people, sadly, start to suffer from cognitive decline — there are good days and bad days.
I am no expert in dementia, but I know that if any of my elderly relatives started acting like Biden I wouldn’t want them going out to the shops, let alone flying off to an international summit.
Biden is not just an octogenarian, he is one who has already suffered two brain aneurysms, one of which was nearly fatal.
If Biden is suffering from cognitive decline — and last night The White House confirmed he had been evaluated by a Parkinson’s specialist three times at annual check-ups but refused to be drawn on more recent visits — perhaps it might explain why he does not himself have the insight to see it is time to throw in the towel.
But that does not excuse many of those around him from continuing to push him to run again for President, most notably his wife, Jill, who has batted away concerns over her husband’s health and seems to be behind efforts to persuade him to stay.
Many Democrat politicians and donors have begun to see things differently, and yet for some reason the party seems to have no mechanism to dislodge Biden now he has been chosen as the candidate.
Even if Biden’s running mate, Kamala Harris, has poor levels of public approval, there are surely plenty of other Democrats who could fill Biden’s boots if the contest was reopened.
Some in the party know that the Democrat-voting public may not care who is at the helm of the party in a race against Donald Trump — or how compos mentis they may be.
As one US insider told this newspaper this week: “They’d vote for an actual donkey if it was on the Democrat ticket if it meant stopping Trump.”
As Starmer will recall, Britain was once in the same position as the US is now, with a once mentally agile leader slipping into mental decline.
But it ended very differently, with Harold Wilson resigning as Prime Minister in 1976 before his condition became evident to the public.
Up to the job
It was just about in time.
A few weeks later an apparently paranoid Wilson invited reporters to his home and told them: “I see myself as the big fat spider in the corner of the room.
“Sometimes I speak when I’m asleep.
“You should both listen.
“Occasionally when we meet I might tell you to go to the Charing Cross Road and kick a blind man.
“That blind man might tell you something.”
The question for US voters is not just whether Biden is up to the job now but what he will be like by the end of his second term.
To adapt a Harold Wilson quote, four years is a long time in dementia.
Starmer will do his best to build a relationship with Joe Biden at their meeting today.
But hopefully, the next time he visits the US it will be to introduce himself to a President who is more up to the task of leading the free world.