(Dobbs) No One’s “Pulling Biden’s Strings”

"The best tunes are played on the oldest fiddles.”

The other day, a guy I work with asked me whether I think “ol’ Joe” has a chance. Knowing nothing of his politics, I asked back, “Do you hope he does?” and what he said in response was, “God no. He’s lost his marbles. He’s just a puppet and everyone else is pulling his strings.”

That’s what concerns me with the election still eight months away. Not that invisible aides are running Joe Biden, but that so many people think they are.

What I think is, they couldn’t be more wrong. I was assigned to enough overseas trips with presidents, and got enough up-close-and-personal looks at presidents in action at home and abroad, that I have this firm belief: every president is too busy, too involved, and too visible for anyone else to be pulling his strings.

However, perception becomes reality and the reality for Joe Biden isn’t good. Not that Donald Trump’s verbal miscues and ineloquent rhetoric in his rambling rants go unnoticed, but it’s Biden’s that seem to get more attention. So here’s the thing: from what I know about public speaking, when Biden stumbles, it isn’t a byproduct of age. He stepped on his own words when he was young. There have been exceptions— Ronald Reagan, who was a professional performer, stands out— but for most presidents, when they’re out there in the fishbowl and speaking publicly day in and day out, they’re bound sometimes to let their mouths get ahead of their minds.

It’s something I understand. For eight years, between being a correspondent for two television networks, I was a radio talk show host. I talked a mile-a-minute for four hours a day, five days a week. After just about every show, someone would tell me of some cringeworthy verbal gaffe I’d committed. I’d had no idea. My mouth and my mind had already moved on to the next thought. I wouldn’t even have known I’d messed up if they hadn’t pointed it out.

So it is with presidents.

True, Biden doesn’t speak with a whole lot of eloquence or energy. That’s not his style. It never has been. But whether it’s fair or not, that contributes to the perception that he’s too old for the job. In two different brand new polls— The New York Times/Siena College poll, and a Wall Street Journal poll— almost three-quarters of registered voters said that Joe Biden is too old to be president. We can be skeptical about the accuracy of any poll these days but still, millions of Americans will vote against Biden— or just sit the election out— because of age.

I would tell them to watch the man. Argue if you like about how he handles the issues that keep cascading into the Oval Office, but he is dealing with them non-stop. He is constantly talking and sometimes negotiating with key players in the two big wars in which the U.S. has an interest, and often meeting with Congressional leaders to push legislation to passage, all on top of campaign outings around the country, journeys to console victims of disasters, and just last week, trips to the border. Then throw in, by my count, sixteen overseas trips to 23 countries, coping with time zones and jet lag. Of course tomorrow night he’ll stand in the spotlight yet again, in front of Congress and the nation, to deliver his State of the Union, knowing full well that his every word will be analyzed and anatomized. And you can bet that on Easter, the last day of this month, despite the heavy affairs of state, he’ll be on the White House lawn for the annual Easter Egg Roll, making it look like it’s the best day of his life. He’s in the spotlight every moment he’s out, which carries its own state of exhaustion.

Most people half his age probably couldn’t keep his pace. 

So he doesn’t glow with presidential charisma? He doesn’t get every word right? So what?! I maintain, no one’s “pulling his strings” because no one could.

As for age, everyone’s different. Joe Biden is 81. We all know of people who are worn out when they’re twenty years his junior. We also all know of people who are still going strong at twelve years his senior. Like Warren Buffett, 93, who still seems to be doing a pretty good job making billions of dollars for his investors. Or Clint Eastwood, also 93, who has made ten movies— either directing or acting or both— since he was Joe Biden’s age. Grandma Moses didn’t even have her first solo exhibition in New York until she was 80 and she was 84 when she painted her most famous work, “Sugaring Off.” When Doris Lessing won the Nobel Prize in Literature, she was 88.

Not long ago I quoted columnist David Brooks, who has covered Biden for a quarter century. What he said about the president was, “In my interviews with him, he’s like a pitcher who used to throw 94 miles an hour who now throws 87. He is clearly still an effective pitcher.”

However, although issues like runaway immigration and past inflation and the challenges of playing a useful role in foreign wars weigh on the president’s prospects for reelection, it’s his age that people talk about the most. What confounds me is, they aren’t talking nearly as much about what we have in store if Trump beats Biden in November: more focus on retribution against political enemies and less protection of civil rights, more isolation at the cost of American power and less respect for democracy, a poor loser and profligate liar and proven insurrectionist in the White House instead of a gracious winner who is, as David Brooks described him, “the guy most plainly with roots in the working and middle class.”

American essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson once said about age, "The best tunes are played on the oldest fiddles.” If voters pay attention to the facts instead of the falsehoods, they’ll see that Joe Biden’s fiddle still is not off key.

Over more than five decades Greg Dobbs has been a correspondent for two television networks including ABC News, a political columnist for The Denver Post and syndicated columnist for Scripps newspapers, a moderator on Rocky Mountain PBS, and author of two books, including one about the life of a foreign correspondent called “Life in the Wrong Lane.” He also co-authored a book about the seminal year for baby boomers, called “1969: Are You Still Listening?” He has covered presidencies, politics, and the U.S. space program at home, and wars, natural disasters, and other crises around the globe, from Afghanistan to South Africa, from Iran to Egypt, from the Soviet Union to Saudi Arabia, from Nicaragua to Namibia, from Vietnam to Venezuela, from Libya to Liberia, from Panama to Poland. Dobbs has won three Emmys, the Distinguished Service Award from the Society of Professional Journalists, and as a 37-year resident of Colorado, a place in the Denver Press Club Hall of Fame.