WASHINGTON DC — It was a close call if there ever was one. For a while there were suggestions that President Biden was about to call it quits and resign as president after his debacle of a debate with Donald Trump. If that had happened, Kamala Harris, Biden’s VP, would automatically assume the presidency. Although the president’s family convinced him to stay the course, there is still a possibility that President Biden might hang up his boots sometime in the near future thus making Harris our nation’s first female Commander-in-Chief — at least until the November elections.
It all started in the now famous June 27 Presidential Debate between President Donald Trump and President Joe Biden. President Trump held sway in that event; President Biden seemed lost. Even the unabashed left-leaning New York Times and Washington Post had to publicly admit that Trump was the winner and that Biden seemed unaware of what was going on. The Times wrote that President Biden “appeared on Thursday night as the shadow of a great public servant. He struggled to explain what he would accomplish in a second term.” Meanwhile, the Washington Post also panned Biden, noting that his performance “raises legitimate questions about whether he’s up for another four years in the world’s toughest job.”
One by one the media that supported Mr. Biden had to admit that he had lost his ability to be America’s president. As the New Yorker magazine put it: “For him to remain the Democratic candidate, the central actor in that referendum, would be an act not only of self-delusion but of national endangerment.” CNN wrote: “Biden was hoarse and at times unintelligible. Words often ran together. He stumbled, particularly when he tried to cite statistics and legislation.” And, according to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution,“This wasn’t a bad night; it was confirmation of the worst fears of some of Biden’s most ardent supporters — that after 36 years in the U.S. Senate, eight more as vice president and a term in the White House, age has finally caught up to him. Biden’s candidacy was grounded in his incumbency and the belief of Democratic leaders and pollsters that he stood the best chance of defeating Trump in November. That is no longer the case.”
Even the British publication, The Economist, declared that Biden was “befuddled and incoherent—too infirm, frankly, to cope with another four years in the world’s hardest job. The Republicans have long said that Mr. Biden’s powers are fading. The debate was his great chance to prove them wrong. Alas, in front of many millions of people, he did not just fail to rebut his opponents, he presented irrefutable evidence to back them up.”
John Grimaldi began his career as a reporter for The Associated Press and subsequently joined the pioneering public relations firm of Carl Byoir & Associates in New York where he was a group vice president. Mr. Grimaldi became a member of the Board and Executive Vice President of the Braun & Company, a leading international business and public relations consultancy. He is a founding member of the Board of Directors of Priva Technologies, Inc. and he has served for more than thirty years as a Trustee of Daytop Village Foundation, which oversees a worldwide drug rehabilitation network.
