Editors at National Review Online explain why they believe the president should step down.
Joe Biden is a crisis in the making. The last president to run for reelection who was so obviously incapable of serving another four years was FDR in 1944. But Roosevelt was in the midst of ably managing a world war and, as it turned out, chose his vice president wisely.
Biden’s mental and physical diminishment has been clear for some time and has been even more alarming the last several weeks. The Robert Hur report on his mishandling of classified documents underlined his reduced state. In an instantly famous sentence, Hur said his team concluded that a jury would consider Biden “a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.” The report, of course, included damning details of Biden not being able to place the years of his vice presidency nor — and this is what precipitated Biden’s angry press conference in response — the year of his son Beau Biden’s death.
Rage has been directed at Hur for including this material in his report. This anger is misplaced. The report indicates that Hur could have justified recommending that Biden be indicted for serious crimes (Hur found that, for years, Biden willfully mishandled classified intelligence, yet the applicable statute requires prosecutors to establish only gross negligence, a less demanding standard). Moreover, Hur was required by regulation to produce a confidential report explaining his reasoning. Then, the attorney general decides whether to make it public or not. Releasing such reports has become the norm over the years, and Attorney General Merrick Garland decided to do it without any redactions.
Hur’s real offense is having interviewed Biden in private and told the truth about what he saw. Notably, no one has credibly denied the details. And nothing in Biden’s public performance, including his press conference that included several notable lapses and gaffes, suggests it’s a calumny.
