OPINION:
Watching President Biden’s news conference last week, I couldn’t help but think back to the time my youngest daughter met Justice Thurgood Marshall. Several years before he retired from the Supreme Court in 1991, I was invited to speak at a seminar in the Virgin Islands to which Justice Marshall had also been invited. The seminar was put together by 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Ralph K. Winter and sponsored by the New York Bar Association.
Winter had clerked for Thoroughgood “Thurgood” Marshall and invited him because he was an icon and because he truly admired him. After his clerkship, Winter, then a professor at Yale Law School, argued a First Amendment case before the Supreme Court that I had helped put together while working for Sen. James Buckley of New York.
My daughter Lisa, who was 10 years old at the time, joined us at the Virgin Islands resort where the seminar was being held. As luck would have it, Lisa was seated next to Marshall and his wife at dinner on our first night. Lisa had no idea who he was, but the ever-gracious Marshall spent some time talking to her.
Even this 10-year-old noticed what most who knew the man had realized for some time: His faculties had long since deteriorated. He watched cartoons on television during the day and was led around by his loving, caring wife. He could barely carry on a conversation, even with a 10-year-old.
Marshall had been a stalwart liberal justice after a spectacular career fighting for civil rights, but by the time Lisa met him, his work on the court was managed by carefully chosen clerks he was barely able to direct. When asked earlier when he might retire, he replied, “I was appointed to a life term and will serve it.”
An admirable goal, perhaps, but it was increasingly obvious to anyone who spent any time with him that he wasn’t up to the job or even able to take care of himself on his own.
As we walked back to our cabana after dinner, Lisa asked me, “What does Mr. Marshall do for a living?” I replied, “He is a justice of the United States Supreme Court.” Horrified, she looked up at me and said, “Oh, my God.”
Two years later, Marshall announced that he could not continue. When asked why, he told reporters, “I’m getting old and coming apart.” Many liberals had covered for him and urged him to stay because of the importance of his vote on their issues. In the end, he was self-aware enough to realize it was time to go.
Last week, special counsel Robert Hur decided against charging Mr. Biden with criminal mishandling of classified materials. He did not, as Mitch Landrieu, former New Orleans mayor and the co-chair of Mr. Biden’s presidential campaign insisted on Sunday’s “Meet the Press,” say that Mr. Biden had done nothing wrong. Mr. Biden is off the hook not because he didn’t do it, but because it would be difficult if not impossible to get a jury to find his actions willful, given his cognitive problems.
After Mr. Hur’s report, Democratic donors began asking party leaders if it was too late to replace Mr. Biden as the party’s 2024 standard-bearer. Mr. Biden compounded the panic with his embarrassing public attempt to rebut the charges. His performance ranks right up there with President Richard Nixon’s “I am not a crook” and Sen. Bill Scott of Virginia, who in 1974 called a press conference to deny he was dumb.
The Democratic National Committee has gone to great lengths to ensure that President Biden does not have any strong opposition. Many politicians have tied their fortunes to Mr. Biden and others who fear the chaos that competition would bring if Democrats were forced to replace Mr. Biden with Vice President Kamala Harris or another presidential wannabe.
Even more continue to insist that even a damaged Mr. Biden has the best chance of defeating the dreaded former President Donald Trump. They’ll support him, cover for him as long as they can get away with it — hope that he himself won’t realize that the show can’t go on.
They needn’t worry on that score. Last week’s press conference made it obvious that Mr. Biden is no longer self-aware enough to grasp that he can no longer handle the position. What they should find far more worrying is that his public appearances have most Americans reacting as my daughter did when I told her what Thurgood Marshall did for a living.
• David Keene is editor-at-large at The Washington Times.
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