Regular readers will know I'm far from being Fake President Biden's biggest fan, but unfair criticism is unfair criticism no matter who it's aimed at. If you're laughing at this latest gaffe, calling it a "senior moment" or whatever and hinting that he has dementia, you're only revealing your own ignorance.
BIDEN: “With regard to the filibuster, I believe we should go back to a position with the filibuster that existed when I came to the United States Senate 120 years ago." pic.twitter.com/UbNpOpVCWF
— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) March 25, 2021
Okay, yes, it's a mistake. He was speaking without notes, off the top of his head, and he made a mistake -- but not the mistake you think he made. Imagine in the middle of a busy press conference, a reporter shouts, "Excuse me, Mr. President, how many digits of pi can you recite?" -- and the president, without even thinking, rattles off the first 500 digits of e perfectly. And your reaction is, "Haha! What a moron! I'm no genius, but even I know that's not even close to pi!"
Is it a mistake? Sure, it's a mistake. But what does it show about the person who makes it? That he's got Alzheimer's -- or that he's frickin' Rain Man? And what does your own reaction show? That you're a pretty smart guy who remembers that pi is three point one something -- or that you're an ignoramus who's never even heard of e?
Coming back to Biden's misstatement, let me explain how it happened, and how it actually shows that he is about as far from having dementia as it is possible to be.
This is Joseph R. Biden of Delaware, who entered the Senate 48 years ago, in 1973. He served as a senator until 2009 and is currently serving in the Harris Administration With Joe Biden As President.
And this is Joseph R. Burton of Kansas, who came to the United States Senate on March 4, 1901 -- almost exactly 120 years before Biden made his statement -- and resigned in 1906 following a corruption conviction.
Now which is more likely? That Biden would have made the ludicrous mistake of thinking he himself had entered the Senate 120 years ago -- or that he might momentarily have confused two different corrupt U.S. politicians who both served in the United States Senate and had extremely similar names? Think about it. Occam's razor.
So far from proving that Biden is "losing his mind," as some Twitter users are uncharitably putting it, this gaffe reveals him to be a man who can, completely off the cuff, estimate how long ago an obscure 20th-century politician entered the Senate, with 99.95% accuracy.
Can you do that? Then best stop snickering.
4 comments:
This is hilarious.
Seeing his remark only in print, I would have assumed he was making a self-deprecating joke about his age.
AP, hard to say. Judging from his level of coherence in the rest of the presser, anything’s possible. If it was a joke, the delivery was much too dry and en passant for an American audience. I think I prefer the Rain Man hypothesis.
I just assumed it was his admission that he's a vampire.
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