So how did the three books on the Biden administration deal with his decline?

Posted on July 12, 2024 by Luke Ford

Christian Lorentzen writes for the July 18, 2024 London Review of Books about the three books that have come out on the Biden administration:

The Last Politician: Inside Joe Biden’s White House and the Struggle for America’s Future by Franklin Foer.
The Fight of His Life: Inside Joe Biden’s White House by Chris Whipple.
The Internationalists: The Fight to Restore American Foreign Policy after Trump by Alexander Ward.

It’s difficult to divine from the histories of the Biden administration written so far just how active a role the president has played in governing the country…

Whereas accounts of the Trump White House varied from clown show to cesspool, with backstabbing among hacks, mercenaries and scumbags, the histories of the Biden administration present a succession of earnest and credentialled professionals lining up to help the president better the country and the world.

…The issue​ of Biden’s age is not much discussed in these books. Whipple, whose previous books include a study of the job of White House chief of staff, recounts a Zoom meeting between Klain and some of his predecessors during the transition in 2020. Jim Jones, the 82-year-old former chief of staff to LBJ, asked: ‘Could a soon to be 82-year-old man, battered by four years of stress and crisis, serve effectively for another full term as president?’ The question became pertinent in April 2022 when at a ceremony at the White House to unveil a proposed expansion of Obamacare, the former president was mobbed by admirers while Biden, in Whipple’s phrase, ‘looked a little lost’. Republican Senator Rick Scott of Florida said: ‘Let’s be honest here. Joe Biden is unwell. He’s unfit for office. He’s incoherent, incapacitated and confused. He doesn’t know where he is half the time.’ ‘This was, of course, false,’ Whipple insists. ‘Biden was mentally sharp, even if he appeared physically frail.’ Bruce Reed, the deputy chief of staff, told Whipple of a long flight home from Geneva in 2021 during which Biden regaled his jetlagged entourage with old stories, including the one about the time he visited the Kremlin and told Putin he had no soul, until everyone except the president passed out. But Foer writes that Senate Republicans ‘doubted Joe Biden was running his own show. Because of his advanced age, they whispered that he was a marionette, wiggling his arms as Klain manipulated him from above. Aides to Mitch McConnell were blunt in their analysis. They dubbed Klain “prime minister”.’ Tucker Carlson has made Biden’s age one of the central themes of his twerpy routine. Defenders of the president have written off such claims as ‘right-wing talking points’, but like left-wing and centrist talking points, right-wing talking points occasionally have some basis in fact.

A search of Google Scholar July 12, 2024, revealed there have been no academic articles on Joe Biden’s cognitive decline.

Posted in Joe Biden, Journalism | Comments Off on So how did the three books on the Biden administration deal with his decline?

No Country For Old Men

Posted on July 12, 2024 by Luke Ford

So how concerned have scholars been with Joe Biden’s mental acuity over the past six years? Very little. They do hate Trump, however.

I just put “Biden senile” into Google Scholar. The third result is an article from the December 2023 edition of the journal Political Thought (written by German scholars):

Ulrich Haltern is Chair of Public Law, EU Law, International Law and Comparative Law at Albert-Ludwigs-University Freiburg (Germany) and Martin Flynn Professor of Global Law at the University of Connecticut Law School. He writes:

NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN? AMERICA’S ELDERLY PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES AS A CRISIS OF THE BODY OF POPULAR SOVEREIGNTY

The world’s oldest democracy is currently also the oldest with regard to its highest decision-makers.

The question whether a person over 80 can ideally or at least reliably fulfil an office such as president of the US is undoubtedly important, for it is rather worrying that Americans discuss the presidential elections with the same concerns as the question whether their parents should still be driving a car. More interesting, however, is the influence of this kind of gerontocracy on the relation between voters and elected, as well as on the system of democratic representation in general. It is not daring to think that a political system, in which the president is more than twice as old as the average citizen (namely 38 years), lacks sufficient contact with its very population…

However, it remains unexplained why other democracies are not gerontocratic. In Europe, the exact opposite is the case: while the population is getting older, political decision-makers are getting younger and younger. Examples include Volodymyr Zelensky, 45, Great Britain’s Rishi Sunak, 43, Italy’s Giorgia Meloni, 46, Spain’s Pedro Sánchez, 51, and Finland’s Petteri Orpo, 53. The latter succeeded Sanna Marin, who had just turned 34 when she got elected in 2019…

The age of American political leaders is alienating younger people from politics. The Economist has shown that the extent to which older voters outrival younger ones is considerably greater in the USA than in other OECD countries. Other studies have proven that the average age of participants in local elections in the USA is 57, almost one generation older than the average eligible voter…

Political identity describes how individuals situate themselves within the political sphere, melding individual and collective identity. Its reference point is the political collective referred to as state or, sometimes, nation.

In the USA, this reference point is much more imagined as an organism than in Europe, where the organic structure of the state has given way to discourse and communication, and where political identity is much more found in the word. The American idea of corporeality − a fusion of body politic and body of the people, reminiscent of the frontispiece of Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan in its composite nature − provides the state with a life and a value of its own, as an organic appearance of the people. When we as Europeans set foot on American soil, we cannot escape the manifestations of the idea of this value of its own, however strange they may seem to us, from the flag to the civil-religious rituals such as the Pledge of Allegiance, an oath of loyalty towards the nation and the flag of the United States. The higher idea embodied in the body politic of the state justifies its absolute demands towards the civic body that constitutes it, and the individual puts himself at its service: “Nothing is more typical of the American character than to give everything for a greater cause”, said Barack Obama in his inaugural address. Herein lies an ambivalence of American identity, which, on the one hand, emphasises great individuality and freedom, which should strive under the rule of law, but at the same time wraps this individuality into a great collective narrative…

Since this kind of imaginative space cannot be comprehended by intuition, it requires a powerful myth. In the USA, it is the myth of the revolution, in which the sovereign people, We the People, manifested itself and brought the state into existence. It is this big bang that unleashed political power and liberal self-government (unlike Europe’s revolutions, which politically restricted existing monarchic power), and therefore legitimation and legitimacy revolve around this moment of emergence only. The revolutionaries become the heroic founding fathers that the following post-heroic generations are to keep referring to…

American presidents are not only seen as leaders who coin and implement political programmes, but always also as elements of America’s imagined past, in which the nation recognises itself. The nation wants to be led, but it also wants to see its reflection. This reflection is twofold, corporeal and ideal….

At first, the corporeal reflection is as comprehensible as it is enigmatic. It is comprehensible because the public is endlessly fascinated by looking at presidential bodies and because presidents stage themselves as physically identifiable transubstantiations of the popular sovereign. Barack Obama, for instance, who, being black, did not reflect the majority of Americans, put it the way that American history “has seared into my genetic makeup the idea that this nation is more than the sum of its parts — that out of many, we are truly one.” Even more enigmatic it seems that in 2024, two about eighty-year-old men are expected to run for presidency…

Meanwhile, reflection requires positioning oneself in the national narrative of origin. This collective imagination is the corridor of argumentation in which the presidents
have to position themselves in terms of history of ideas. Again, we can learn from Obama. He closely followed Lincoln’s example and adopted his civil religious, morally charged vision of a fusion between the individual and the collective body. Lincoln had fully developed this vision in his Gettysburg speech, in which the semantic of patriotism
and love finds its vehicle, culminating in the theme of sacrifice and not ignoring the willingness to sacrifice oneself. At the very end of his book The Audacity of Hope, Obama
describes how his Washington evening jogging routes lead him to the Lincoln Memorial and the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool. Lincoln and Martin Luther King play a key role in Obama’s account. He, both actually and figuratively, runs towards the two of them, as if they were present for real (and not only their memorials and memories), or as if Obama was able to transcend time. He is reading Lincoln’s Gettysburg speech and second inaugural address. In his head, he hears King’s famous “I have a dream” speech and sees the audience of 250.000 at the Reflecting Pool. Lincoln, King, Obama and the nation become one, thus wondrously and wonderfully suspending the rules of time and space and sweeping along all Americans.

…If we still want to say something unifying with regard to the representants’ age, then that could be that, in their increasingly senile frailness, they represent the disintegrating state of the American Constitution and its institutions. Only with good will can we still discern the might and glory of the political power that rests on popular sovereign representation and spreads apart there. However, even a quick glimpse reveals that the coat of power has been hanging loosely over brittle bones for a long time, and that the end of legitimate representation and its reliable decisions could soon be nigh. Ruffling up their feathers, but short of breath and emaciated, the staff runs across the scene, freezes, stumbles or forgets the sentence just started, but that does not matter: the political itself has broken in two, and its standard performers do not represent a nation.

I don’t recall feeling a fascination for the bodies of presidents.

Posted in America | Comments Off on No Country For Old Men

I Wish The News Media Had Given Joe Biden As Much Scrutiny As An NFL Coach

Posted on July 12, 2024 by Luke Ford

Imagine if the New York Times and company had covered Joe Biden’s mental acuity with as much scrutiny as the media gave former Dallas Cowboys coach Tom Landry in his declining years?

The Chicago Tribune published Nov. 6, 1988:

The legendary football coach, known for his fedora and his impassive expression on the sidelines, offered no excuses and few plausible explanations for the Dallas Cowboys` fifth straight loss, which dropped the club`s record to 2-7, the team`s worst start in 25 seasons.

In Dallas, however, many fans and critics thought they knew the reason:

Tom Landry.

He`s ”senile,” sportswriters and fans cried after the 64-year-old coach became confused about the ball`s position in the final seconds of a recent game. The confusion led to a disastrous Dallas error and a 24-23 loss to the Philadelphia Eagles in the final four seconds.

”Petrified cells beneath the funny hat,” one columnist diagnosed, decrying Landry`s quirky play-calling and his refusal to delegate authority to his assistants.

The Chicago Tribune published July 29, 1990:

Dallas sports columnist Skip Bayless labeled Landry ”senile” during the 1988 season when a 3-13 record and a change in ownership ended one of the most remarkable success stories in sports history.

…Calling him ”a prisoner of his myth,” Bayless also writes Landry ”was just a small-town guy with a mild speech impediment who sometimes couldn`t remember the names of his players. . . . The real Landry at times seemed to blank out under pressure on the sideline, forgetting plays or calling ones that didn`t exist or made no sense. . . . Yes, beneath the stoneface facade, the coat and tie, Landry sometimes came unraveled, at the expense of his quarterback. Yet the real Landry was too insecure to ever accept any blame.”

…”God`s Coach” is not on Landry`s shelf.

”No, I don`t read Skip Bayless. I think he`s probably spoken to me about twice in the last four years, so I don`t think he has my feelings or my thoughts,” Landry said.

The one time I was next to Tom Landry was in the locker room after the Dec. 22, 1985 game when the 49ers defeated the Cowboys 31-16 at Candlestick Park. I was a news reporter for KAHI/KHYL radio. I was walking out of the 49ers press conference and towards the visitors locker room. Tom Landry was standing in the hallway talking to several journalists. I stuck my microphone into the mix and heard Tom say, “I haven’t talked to Skip Bayless in four years.”

Ditka remembers Landry botching plays and worse. As the team`s offensive and defensive coordinator refusing to delegate authority, Landry changed a game plan and cost the Cowboys their first Super Bowl in 1970.

”He tried to do it again the next year, and we wouldn`t let him,” Ditka said.

…Pete Gent didn`t understand Landry either. A former Cowboy and author who has made a living writing about the Cowboys, Gent told Bayless: ”What many guys wanted was for Tom to be their father figure. The two guys he had the most trouble with, Duane Thomas and Thomas Henderson, had lost their fathers, and they looked to Tom. But there was this erratic split in Tom`s personality, the business and the religion. Here`s a man dealing in human flesh and crippling injuries, betraying men, possibly lying to them about their physical conditions, deceiving them about why they`ve been released, keeping them ignorant and scared. I just don`t believe a man can preach moral ethics and do what he did.”

Ron Fimrite writes in the Sep. 3, 1990 edition of Sports Illustrated:

Bayless sees Landry, Cowboy president Tex Schramm and personnel director Gil Brandt—all of whom left the organization last year when the team was sold to Arkansas businessman Jerry Jones—as an “unholy trinity.” Schramm, who built the franchise from scratch, is dismissed as a bibulous blowhard whose steadfast promotion of the Cowboys as America’s Team served primarily as a motivational tool for opponents enraged by such presumption.

Brandt, widely credited with introducing computer technology to scouting, is, in Bayless’s hard-eyed view, a phony who knows virtually nothing about either football or technology. Bayless suggests that Brandt lasted 29 years in the game only by calling in markers from college coaches he had treated to favors. And team owner Clint Murchison was, for Bayless, an incorrigible philanderer who sank so low as to steal the wife of one of his employees-Brandt’s, as it turned out…

In one of his newspaper columns cited in this book, Bayless even suggested that the once-revered stone face had grown senile. At his best, says Bayless, Landry wouldn’t have won the “big ones” without quarterback Roger Staubach countermanding his orders and calling his own plays.

A search of Google Scholar July 12, 2024, revealed there have been no academic articles analyzing Joe Biden’s cognitive decline but there have been many articles decrying any notice given to Joe Biden’s cognitive decline.

The Journal of Active Aging released this study in 2020 by S. Jay Olshansky, PhD (Professor of Public Health, University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, Illinois), Hiram Beltrán-Sánchez, PhD, UCLA, Yang Claire Yang, PhD, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Yi Li, PhD, University of Macao Nir Barzilai, MD, Ingeborg and Ira Leon Rennert Chair in Aging Research, and Director, Institute for Aging Research, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Paola Rode, MD, Former Medical Director of Hematology Oncology, Lahey North Medical Center; and Former Assistant Clinical Professor of Medicine, Tufts School of Medicine, and Bradley Willcox, MD, Professor and Director of Research, Department of Geriatric Medicine, John A. Burns School of Medicine University of Hawaii:

…Biden is expected to outlive Trump, even though he is three years older. The reasons are that Biden has an exceptional health profile for a man his age (e.g., ideal Body Mass Index [BMI], physically active, few ability of surviving a full term in office after the election.

* There is no evidence available in the public record to indicate that either candidate is facing a major cognitive functioning challenge—either now or during the next four years. Trump does face an elevated risk of Alzheimer’s disease due to a family history of the disease on his father’s side. It may be tempting to conclude that evidence of cognitive decline does not exist because extensive diagnostic assessments of cognitive functioning have not been completed, and if done, something significant might be revealed.

* …from independent reviews of publicly available medical record data on both candidates by three independent physicians with expertise in aging; it is our conclusion that chronological age is not a relevant factor for either candidate running for president of the United States. Both candidates face a lower than average risk of experiencing significant health or cognitive functioning challenges during the next four years.

Gerontologist Kate de Medeiros PhD published in 2024 in the journal of Age Culture Humanities:

The U.S. presidential elections have been the site of racism, sexism, classism, ableism, and ageism among other problematic issues. While the 2024 U.S. presidential election continues to be fraught with numerous “isms” and accusations, the focus in this essay is on a new and powerful discrediting tactic: the whisper of cognitive decline. Accusations of cognitive decline not only cast doubt on a politician’s ability to think and act clearly—an unpardonable sin in leadership1—but also builds on ageist stereotypes that make such accusations seem credible despite evidence. Ultimately, I argue that because Donald Trump and Joe Biden are wealthy, white, educated men of roughly similar ages, seventy-seven and eighty-one respectively, targeting their cognitive status feeds into social stigmas and fears that are difficult to counter and that, unfortunately, the harm caused by this new level of attack negatively affects older people and people living with neurocognitive disorders…

Although candidate age is still an issue in the 2024 elections, cognitive competence rather than age alone has taken precedence for both candidates. Cries about Biden’s cognitive state have been furthered by Special Counsel Robert Hur’s report regarding Biden’s unauthorized possession of classified documents. Hur writes:

“We have also considered that, at trial, Mr. Biden would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview of him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning elderly man with a poor memory. Based on our direct interactions with and observations of him, he is someone for whom many jurors will want to identify reasonable doubt. It would be difficult to convince a jury that they should convict him—by then a former president well into his eighties—of a serious felony that requires a mental state of willfulness.”

…Throughout the report, Hur notes lapses in Biden’s memory related to how he obtained various classified documents, whether he recalled returning documents to the National Archives, what he told his ghostwriter about the documents, and other details…

As neurologists remind us, everyone forgets, and forgetfulness with age is normal, not an indicator of dementia. Charan Ranganath writes: “Generally, memory functions begin to decline in our 30s and continue to fade into old age. However, age in and of itself doesn’t indicate the presence of memory deficits that would affect an individual’s ability to perform in a demanding leadership role. And an apparent memory lapse may or may not be consequential, depending on the reasons it occurred.”

Yet, questions about Biden’s cognition continue..

On the Trump side, an increasing number of experts are suggesting that he is currently living with dementia (Phillips). For example, a March 2024 article in Newsweek quotes several psychiatrists who claim that Trump is not forgetful, which is not a clear indicator of dementia as mentioned earlier, but rather confuses reality and changes the meaning of sentences midstream, which can be indicators of dementia. Reporter Aleks Phillips writes: “John Gartner, a psychologist and former professor at Johns Hopkins University Medical School, has defended Biden’s forgetfulness as a natural sign of his age, but authored a petition that argues Trump is “showing unmistakable signs strongly suggesting dementia.” He wrote at the start of March that the former president showed “progressive deterioration in memory, thinking, ability to use language, behavior, and both gross and fine motor skills,” adding that he felt “an ethical obligation to warn the public, and urge the media to cover this national emergency.”

Other specialists and professionals are also quoted in the article, supporting the dementia claim…

Social stigmatization, a type of public disapproval of a person or groups based on an attribute such as memory loss, can lead to devaluation and exclusion from social participation… the public scrutiny of the cognitive abilities of the two leading presidential contenders has consequences beyond the election. Discrediting through the suggestion of decline actively contributes to discrimination of older people and people living with a type of neurocognitive disorder, regardless of their age.

Resolute Square claims that “today’s GOP and their media mouthpieces are actively working to end democracy in the United States.”

Brian Daitzman writes June 19, 2024 for Resolute Square:

President Joe Biden’s cognitive health has been under intense scrutiny, particularly by conservative and far-right media outlets. These narratives often misrepresent normal age-related lapses and overlook Biden’s lifelong challenge with a childhood stutter.

Born in 1942, Biden experiences some normal cognitive changes typical of aging, such as occasional forgetfulness or slight pauses in speech. These are common in individuals of his age and do not indicate severe cognitive impairment. More importantly, Biden’s history with a stutter has influenced his speech patterns, leading to pauses as he carefully constructs his words. His stutter, a challenge since childhood, has been a source of mockery during the Trump era.

Dr. Geraldine Williams, a speech pathologist, emphasizes that Biden’s pauses are strategic, reflecting a coping mechanism for his stutter rather than cognitive decline. “His speech patterns are indicative of someone managing a stutter effectively, not someone suffering from dementia,” Dr. Williams explains.

Despite these challenges, Biden’s cognitive health remains robust. His 2023 medical examination described him as “healthy, vigorous, and fit to successfully execute the duties of the presidency.” Cognitive assessments by his physician, Dr. Kevin O’Connor, confirm that Biden maintains the mental acuity required for his role.

Dr. Leo Gugerty, Professor Emeritus in Psychology at Clemson University, asserts that Biden exhibits strong cognitive capacities crucial for presidential leadership. “His ability to make deliberate decisions, manage complex issues, and demonstrate extensive knowledge is consistent with someone who has preserved critical cognitive functions,” says Dr. Gugerty.

Trump’s Cognitive Decline: Expert Analysis

Observations from Experts

Experts in neurology and psychology have noted signs of cognitive decline in Donald Trump, raising concerns about his mental fitness.

Dr. John Gartner, a psychologist and former professor at Johns Hopkins University Medical School, describes Trump as showing “progressive deterioration in memory, thinking, language, behavior, and both gross and fine motor skills.” Dr. Gartner’s analysis suggests a decline beyond typical age-related changes, pointing to serious cognitive impairments.

Dr. Lance Dodes, a retired professor from Harvard Medical School, adds that Trump’s behavior reflects “gross paranoid psychosis” and “confusion about reality.” Dr. Dodes notes that Trump’s inability to distinguish between reality and delusion is a hallmark of severe cognitive issues, exacerbated by his narcissistic tendencies.

Physical signs also suggest cognitive decline. Trump’s walk appears wide-based, with a noticeable right leg swing. He seems unnaturally immobile when standing still and struggles with coherent speech, often going off on tangents and repeating phrases.

Dr. Elisabeth Zoffmann suggests Trump might have Behavioral Variant Fronto-Temporal Dementia (FTD). “My clinical experience and these collected observations are congruent with the diagnostic criteria for Behavioral Variant Fronto-Temporal Dementia (FTD),” she notes. Dr. Gartner contrasts Trump’s decline with Biden’s normal aging, stating, “Biden’s brain is aging. Trump’s brain is dementing.”

Cognitive and Psychological Defects

Dr. Suzanne Lachmann observes significant changes in Trump’s speech patterns, noting that he often “forgets how the sentence began and invents something in the middle,” resulting in “an incomprehensible word salad.” These patterns suggest severe cognitive impairment, contrasting starkly with his earlier ability to communicate more coherently.

In public appearances, Trump has struggled with word retrieval, often defaulting to vague or incorrect terms. His frequent misstatements, such as referring to “wall mongers” instead of “warmongers” and confusing former and current presidents, illustrate his growing cognitive challenges.

Ramin Setoodeh on Trump’s Memory Issues

Ramin Setoodeh, co-editor-in-chief at Variety, provides firsthand accounts of Trump’s severe memory issues. Setoodeh, who interacted extensively with Trump, notes that the former president often could not remember basic details or even recall Setoodeh during repeated interactions. “Donald Trump had severe memory issues. As the journalist who spent the most time with him, I have to say, he couldn’t remember things. He couldn’t even remember me,” Setoodeh recounts.

Trump’s Mental Illness: Expert Analysis

Malignant Narcissism and Delusions of Grandeur

Experts consistently point to Trump’s malignant narcissism, characterized by a grandiose self-perception and complete disregard for truth and honesty.

Dr. Lance Dodes describes Trump’s mental state as dominated by “severe narcissistic, antisocial character disorder,” manifesting in an inability to tolerate losses and a propensity for destructive behavior when faced with accountability.

Mary Trump, a clinical psychologist, and Donald Trump’s niece, reinforces this view, noting her uncle’s “untreated psychiatric disorders,” including delusions of grandeur and extreme narcissism. Mary Trump describes him as having been “reasonably adept at getting his point across” in his younger years but now exhibiting clear signs of “mental confusion” and an “inability to communicate effectively.”

Cruel Sadism and Lack of Empathy

Trump’s behavior has also been characterized by a lack of empathy and a penchant for cruelty. Dr. Justin Frank, a psychiatrist, describes Trump as a “cruel sadist” who takes pleasure in inflicting pain on others. His policies and public statements often reflect a disregard for the suffering of others, consistent with traits of malignant narcissism.

Donald Trump’s Aberrant Behavior

Donald Trump’s behavior has often been characterized as erratic and unconventional, raising questions about his fitness for leadership. Numerous anecdotes from his presidency illustrate a pattern of aberrant behavior that departs from expected presidential norms.

Ranting About Wind Turbines: In a bizarre speech, Trump ranted about wind turbines causing cancer, a claim without any scientific basis. His obsession with wind turbines’ supposed dangers became a frequent, unfounded talking point.

The Sharpie Incident: During Hurricane Dorian, Trump displayed a map altered with a Sharpie to falsely extend the hurricane’s projected path into Alabama, contradicting official forecasts. This incident, dubbed “Sharpiegate,” epitomized his disregard for factual information.

Covfefe Tweet: Trump’s infamous tweet, “Despite the constant negative press covfefe” left many confused, as the term “covfefe” had no meaning. The tweet remained up for hours, and the White House never clarified its intent, leaving it as a symbol of his erratic communication style.

Injecting Disinfectant: During a press briefing, Trump suggested injecting disinfectant as a potential COVID-19 treatment. This dangerous and scientifically unfounded advice led to public health warnings and ridicule from the medical community.

These anecdotes reflect a pattern of unpredictable and often irrational behavior, undermining confidence in Trump’s capacity for rational decision-making.

The Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) and Trump’s Misleading Claims

Trump’s boastfulness about his MoCA score perfectly illustrates his lack of depth in understanding cognitive assessments. Regularly bragging about his performance on the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA), Trump seemed to think it was equivalent to an IQ test or the SATs, viewing it as evidence of intellectual giftedness. This delusion reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of the MoCA’s purpose. Its tasks—like distinguishing animals or recalling words—assess basic cognitive functions necessary for daily life, not the profound intellectual depth required for the presidency.

Trump reportedly boasted about his MoCA score during White House meetings. An anonymous attendee recalled his overemphasis, noting, “I just remember when I walked out, saying to a coworker, ‘That was nuts,’” in reference to Trump’s lengthy discussion of the test during a crucial campaign meeting.

The Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA), developed by Dr. Ziad Nasreddine in 1996, is a tool designed to screen for mild cognitive impairment (MCI). It evaluates memory, attention, language, visuospatial skills, executive functions, and orientation, aiming to detect early signs of cognitive decline. Dr. Nasreddine explains, “The MoCA’s elements are selected with an intent to assess multiple cognitive domains that relate to human memory and brain function.” Scored on a 30-point scale, with 26 or above considered normal, it is a preliminary screening tool, not a comprehensive measure of intelligence or capability for complex tasks.

Dr. Jonathan Reiner criticized Trump’s claims, stating, “It’s a very, very low bar for somebody who carries the nuclear launch codes in their pocket to pass and certainly nothing to brag about.” The MoCA does not assess the high-level cognitive functions required for nuanced decision-making or executive responsibilities. It is designed to identify potential cognitive impairments, not to measure intelligence or suitability for leadership.

The MoCA’s simplicity allows it to screen effectively for cognitive issues but does not gauge the sophisticated abilities required for national governance or crisis management. Trump’s misuse of the MoCA as a measure of intellectual aptitude highlights his misapprehensions and demonstrates his lack of readiness to tackle the multifaceted challenges of the presidency.

False Equivalence and Cognitive Health: Trump vs. Biden

Claims equating the cognitive health of former President Donald Trump and President Joe Biden lack a factual basis and serve to obscure significant differences. Cognitive health assessments and observable behavior point to a clear distinction. Trump’s erratic behavior, frequent lapses in speech, and questionable decision-making have raised concerns about his cognitive decline. Specific incidents, such as his difficulty with common words, repeated falsehoods, and erratic public conduct, underscore this decline.

In contrast, despite being older, President Biden has shown no similar cognitive decline.
His administration’s management of complex policy issues and his public speeches indicate intact cognitive function. Leading medical experts, including Dr. Sanjay Gupta, have noted that while Biden’s age naturally raises questions, there is no substantial evidence of cognitive impairment.

Bibliography:

Achenbach, Joel, and Mark Johnson. “What Science Tells Us About Biden, Trump and Evaluating an Aging Brain.” Washington Post, May 18, 2024.

Blake, Aaron. “Our Flawed Comparisons of the Mental Faculties of Biden and Trump.” Washington Post, June 10, 2024.

Devega, Chauncey. “Dr. Lance Dodes on Trump’s Courtroom Antics: ‘Decompensate to the Point of Gross Paranoid Psychosis.’” Salon, November 7, 2023.

Gugerty, Leo. “Biden and Trump May Forget Names or Personal Details, but Here Is What Really Matters in Assessing Whether They’re Cognitively Up for the Job.” The Conversation, June 10, 2024.

Johnson, Ted. “‘Rupert Murdoch’s Sad Little Super PAC’: White House Pushes Back Again at New York Post, This Time Over Biden-Obama L.A. Fundraiser Video.” Yahoo News, June 17, 2024.

Joyella, Mark. “Biographer Says Trump ‘Has Severe Memory Issues’ and ‘He Couldn’t Even Remember Me.’” Forbes, June 17, 2024.

Lewis, Tanya. “The ‘Shared Psychosis’ of Donald Trump and His Loyalists.” Scientific American, January 11, 2021.

Olmsted, Edith. “Trump’s Bizarre New Excuse for His Milwaukee Comment.” New Republic, June 17, 2024.

Parker, Ashley, and Dan Diamond. “A ‘Whale’ of a Tale: Trump Continues to Distort Cognitive Test He Took.” Washington Post, January 19, 2024.

Phillips, Aleks. “Donald Trump Dementia Evidence ‘Overwhelming,’ Says Top Psychiatrist.” Newsweek, March 20, 2024.

Phillips, Aleks. “Donald Trump’s ‘Ability to Communicate Has Deteriorated’: Mary Trump.” Newsweek, March 5, 2024.

Scotten, Marin. “He Couldn’t Even Remember Me: Trump Has ‘Severe Memory Issues,’ Says Author Who Interviewed Him.” Salon, June 17, 2024.

Margaret Morganroth Gullette, a resident scholar at the Women’s Studies Research Center at Brandeis University, writes in 2024 prior to the June 28 debate:

Everyone who has noticed the ageism in US Presidential politics has an opinion as to (1) whether the incumbent Joe Biden is indeed “too old” and/or (2) how best to rebut the Republican-leaning accusation…

In February 2024, a US special counsel, Robert J. Hur, when recommending that charges be dismissed against President Joe Biden for his alleged mishandling of classified documents, released an inappropriate comment on Biden’s mental acuity. Hur’s report concluded that Biden would “likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview of him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory” (Doherty and Thompson). Leave aside the condescension. The word “elderly” alone is disparaging in social usage and may be experienced as hurtful to those who feel targeted. Even those rebutting the Hur description scrupulously quoted the slur again. And again.

The rebuttals were forceful. David Moye, writing in Huffpost, announced, “Robert Hur Admits Telling Biden He Seemed to Have ‘Photographic Recall’.” On Vox, another rebuttal, by Andrew Prokop, appeared under the headline, “Robert Hur’s report exaggerated Biden’s memory issues.” In a Congressional hearing, CNN reported, Representative Adam Schiff (Democrat of California) charged that Hur, a registered Republican, had to know that his generalization would be used to demean Biden in his run for re-election. In terms of the rules for special counsels, “You don’t gratuitously add language that you know will be used in a political campaign […] That was a political choice. That was the wrong choice.”

…No doubt, ageism is an unworthy distraction in so pivotal an election, with dictatorship and the end of Social Security as prospects the Republican candidate has already announced. Will “mental acuity” resound six months hence? Republican surrogates will try to keep all the negatives around Biden’s age alive. But there may be another crisis that only a sitting president can handle. On the one hand we have a healthy incumbent with a humorous, friendly, even soothing paternal presence and many recent accomplishments in economics and policy. On the other, a former president who incited an insurrection with lies about his 2020 election defeat, has been charged with 91 separate felony indictments and was convicted of committing fraud and sexual assault. Other questions will be whether democracy, reproductive rights, and similar values matter to more voters than the fearful salience of age.

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WP Op/Ed: How the media sleepwalked into Biden’s debate disaster

Posted on July 12, 2024 by Luke Ford

Megan McCardle writes July 11, 2024 in the Washington Post:

[M]ainstream outlets did report on the president’s age, even if too gently. Why were we so gentle? Well, there’s a broad journalistic norm against picking on physical characteristics (which is why even certified Donald Trump-hating columnists have made remarkably few cracks about his comb-over).

Obviously, it was a mistake to treat age, which affects job performance, like hairstyling, which doesn’t. But that error was bipartisan — over the years, I’ve heard a lot of people talking about Trump’s senior moments without ever putting those thoughts on the page.

We all take note of physical characteristics. The more safe we feel with someone, the more likely we are to confide on physical characteristics. The more spontaneous we are, the more likely we are to note physical characteristics. The less of a filter we have (such as with many old people or delirious people), the more likely we are to note physical characteristics.

One reason for the popularity of live streams is that you can comment on physical characteristics and you can say things like, “Physiognomy is destiny.”

Great writers closely describe physical characteristics. Dabblewriter.com notes: “When writing a character description, begin with their physical appearance, including their height, weight, hair and eye color, and any distinctive features. Make sure you also include information about their age, ethnicity, and any scars or tattoos, or anything else of note.”

When did it become socially unacceptable to remark on physical characteristics? When I Googled this topic, I could find no defense of it. That means, I could find no defense of telling this truth. I recognize the virtues of courtesy, but they often come at the price of truth, and sometimes truth is more important than courtesy.

A spontaneous cutting remark has the power to change your life for the good. The late writer Greg Critser was getting out of his car when a stranger driving by yelled, “Get out of the way, fatso.” That inspired Critser to research fat, to lose weight, and to write a best-selling book, Fat Land: How Americans Became the Fattest People in the World.

I suspect that in the more spontaneous world of the middle ages, people were quicker to comment on physical characteristics.

In his work-in-progress, Conservative Claims of Cultural Oppression, philosopher Rony Guldmann writes:

Medievals were distinguished, not by any generalized amorality or egoism, but by a fundamentally different mental and emotional landscape. They lived in a society where individuals gave way to their impulses and drives with an ease, spontaneity, and openness that is foreign to us today. And so they had emotional lives that were comparatively unregulated and liable to oscillate violently and unpredictably between extremes.

“…a moment ago they were joking, now they mock each other, one word leads to another, and suddenly from the midst of laughter they find themselves in the fiercest feud. Much that appears contradictory to us—the intensity of their piety, the violence of their fear of hell, their guilt feelings, their penitence, the immense outbursts of joy and gaiety, the sudden flaring and the uncontrollable force of their hatred and belligerence—all these, like the rapid changes of mood, are in reality symptoms of the same social and personality structure. The instincts, the emotions were vented more freely, more directly, more openly than later. It is only to us, in whom everything is more subdued, moderate, and calculated, and in whom social taboos are built much more deeply into the fabric of instinctual life as self-restraints, that this unveiled intensity of piety, belligerence, or cruelty appears as contradictory.”

One of the decisive developments in the Western civilizing process, writes Elias, was the transformation of warriors into courtiers. This political transition entailed a set of thoroughgoing psychological changes that would eventually spread beyond the monarchic courts and profoundly affect the identity of the modern West, shaping our basic concept of what it means to be “civilized.” Elias writes that the affects of the independent, self-sufficient feudal lord of old had, like those of medievals in general, enjoyed “rather free and unfettered play in all the terrors and joys of life.”

With the feudal lord’s time being “only very slightly subject to the continuous division and regulation imposed by dependence on others,” he did not develop a strict and stable super-ego through which compulsions stemming from others became self-restraints. But all this changes with the rise of the great royal courts of the absolutist period. Now “his value has its real foundation not in the wealth or even the achievements or ability of the individual, but in the favour he enjoys with the king, the influence he has with other mighty ones, his importance in the play of courtly cliques.” Under these new conditions, “He is no longer the relatively free man, the master of his own castle, whose castle is his homeland. He now lives at court. He serves the prince. He waits on him at table. And at court he lives surrounded by people. He must behave toward each of them in exact accordance with their rank and his own. He must learn to adjust his gestures exactly to the different ranks and standing of the people at court, to measure his language exactly, and even to control his eyes exactly. It is a new self-discipline, an incomparably stronger reserve that is imposed on people by this new social space and the new ties of interdependence.”

…Medieval mayhem and wantonness were now suppressed, as power became less and less a matter of brute physical force and was instead exercised through words and surveillance. This left individuals more socially vulnerable than before, and this changed their relationship to themselves. With the radical heightening of the level of the day-to-day coercion people could exert on one another, “the demand for ‘good behavior’ is raised more emphatically,” and that “[a]ll problems concerned with behavior take on new importance.”

…The moderation of spontaneous emotion, the extension of mental space beyond the moment into the past and future, and the habit of connecting events in terms of cause and effect are not timeless human faculties, but specific transformations in the human make-up made possible by the monopolization of physical violence in the state and the social interdependencies this fostered. Only with these did ever-broader segments of society develop the “strict, continuous, and uniform” modes of drive-control that were once exclusive to monks and courtiers.126The development of modernity can thus be viewed as the democratization of courtly civility and secularization of monkish asceticism.

Behavioral norms that were originally used to tame an unruly military aristocracy through court service or estate management were over later centuries deployed to tame the general population—to which end religion became conscripted, offering as it did a theological justification for disciplining wide swaths of the population away from the wantonness and license of an earlier period. Thus, explains Taylor, did the ethic of “active state intervention,” promoted by absolutistic governments combine with Calvinism so as to “introduce a rationalized, disciplined, professionalized mode of life” into the populace as a whole. These “ordering impulses” sought to “create a stable order in society by training people into ‘settled courses,’ through dedication to some profession, whose goals were defined in terms of service to our fellow human beings: in the private sector, through productive labor.”

…Occupying his social position with relative security, the independent knight of old felt no need to banish coarseness and vulgarity from his life. But with the court having become a kind of “stock exchange” in which the his value was being continually assessed and reassessed, he could no longer afford this former freedom. Gone were the days in which joking could lead to mockery and from there to violent disagreement and violence itself in the span of a few minutes. Gone were the days in which one could leap from the most exuberant pleasure to the deepest despondency on the basis of slight impressions. What mattered now was others’ impressions, not one’s own, and the foremost task became impression-management, which also meant self-management. A new self-consciousness emerged on the scene, not because essential human nature had been liberated from the confining horizons of a benighted past, but because a new social milieu created inner depths out of outer necessity. Whereas political standing was formerly decided by the sword, it is now “[c]ontinuous reflection, foresight, and calculation, self-control, precise and articulate regulation of one’s own affects, knowledge of the whole terrain, human and non-human, in which one acts, [that] become more and more indispensable preconditions of social success.”102People now “mold themselves more deliberately than in the Middle Ages” and increasingly “observe themselves and others.” Directly or indirectly, the “intertwining of all activities with which everyone at court is inevitably confronted, compels…[the courtier] to observe constant vigilance, and to subject everything he says and does to minute scrutiny.”

…The courtiers had to become more calculating and less wholehearted—less “sincere” and “authentic,” we might say. Such was necessitated by the new social interdependence.

…The lengthier and more intricate the chains of social interdependency became, the stronger the need to impose self-discipline…

The development of modernity can thus be viewed as the democratization of courtly civility and secularization of monkish asceticism.

To be on the right means to be more medieval than liberals. Perhaps right-wing instinctual spontaneity allowed conservative to more quickly note that Joe Biden appeared senile while more civilized people would hold back on those comments for fears of sounding ageist and ableist.

How many courtiers would have felt comfortable stating publicly that the king is senile? Not many. When there were two competitors for the throne, how many courtiers would have felt comfortable stating publicly that the competitor favored by most courtiers is senile? Not many.

On the other hand, a lord of the manor would have felt more comfortable saying publicly what he believed to be true. Once he was forced to live at court to retain his status, his willingness to state unpopular truths would go down.

Courtier morality discourages saying unpopular truths. The more that power is “exercised through words and surveillance,” “[w]ith the radical heightening of the level of the day-to-day coercion people could exert on one another,” the more care people will take with what they say.

The more vulnerable members of the press feel, the more they will take care not to say risky things.

In his 1988 essay, A Secure Base, psychiatrist Dr. John Bowlby wrote that “life is best organized as a series of daring ventures from a secure base.” The less secure your base, the less likely you are to launch into daring ventures. Journalism is more financially insecure now than at any time in the past century.

In a video published July 10, 2024, Charles Murray said: “The press is staffed now by members of the cognitive elite. Journalism in the 1940s, 1950s, was a working class profession. A lot of journalists hadn’t even gone to college. Now if you look at the staffs of the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, you go through all of the big magazines, the people who run the television networks, they come out of the same elite schools [as the ruling class]. They are full participants in a semi-conspiracy. If you follow what has happened in the United States for the last week or so, after Joe Biden’s debate appearance, you have observed the exposure of the extent to which journalists covered up what they knew to be true of Joe Biden’s mental frailty. Only now after the debate exposed it are they rushing to expose it. None of them are willing to say we covered it up. The same thing happens with intelligence, genetics, racial difference. They will not report. Social pressure to be part of your in-group is extremely strong. Complaints about the fake news are all true.”

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Joe Biden Press Conference (7-11-24)

Posted on July 11, 2024 by Luke Ford

01:00 Live coverage of Joe Biden’s press conference
03:00 Joe Biden takes questions
54:40 Megan McCardle: How the media sleepwalked into Biden’s debate disaster, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/07/11/media-coverage-biden-conspiracy-failure/
1:00:00 Rabbis, Converts & Jewish Law, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=8844
1:01:00 Can Converts Become Rabbis?, https://lukeford.net/blog/?p=8577
1:07:00 Dissecting the trope: “This is Joe Biden’s decision.”
1:25:00 Dooovid joins, https://x.com/RebDoooovid
1:30:30 Did Biden Thrive, Survive, or Die Politically? | Mark Halperin, https://www.youtube.com/live/YVSCgs4F4bs
2:11:00 When Joe Biden steps down, what will it look like? A rally? A national TV address?

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