Old acquaintance says Biden might go down in history as ‘selfish’

A retired journalist who’s known President Biden since 1971 says the 81-year-old may be remembered as a selfish man who “clung to his office too long.”

Curtis Wilkie, who met Mr. Biden when they were young men in Delaware and followed his career for The Boston Globe, wrote in an op-ed that it has become “painful” for him to watch the president’s televised appearances.

“When Biden walked onto the set of the infamous debate last month, he did so with shuffling half-steps, the gait of an old man,” Mr. Wilkie wrote for Mississippi Today.

Mr. Wilkie hasn’t seen Mr. Biden in person since 2007. He noted he will turn 84 this fall, when the president turns 82, and said he believes they share some of old age’s afflictions.

“I began worrying about both of us a couple of years ago,” Mr. Wilkie wrote. “There began to be incidents in which I failed to be able to come up with the name of someone I know well. Or a simple word will go into hiding, popping up hours later. When I go blank in a conversation I apologize, laugh and blame it on my aging brain. I’m assured it’s nothing, but I find it troubling.”

He said of the president, “I began to notice Biden had some of the same handicaps. He butchers names or can’t remember them at all. Sometimes he appears balmy. His enthusiasm seems withered.”

He said he wishes Mr. Biden lived up to his promise in 2020 to be a “transitional president.”

“Instead, his Democratic Party is faced with its worst nightmare, the distinct possibility of a sweeping victory in November for Trump and his MAGA followers,” Mr. Wilkie wrote. “And instead of leaving a strong personal legacy, Biden may be remembered in the history of this turbulent period as a selfish man, weakened by age, who clung to his office too long.”

As Mr. Biden prepares to accept the Democratic nomination in Chicago next month, he’s facing calls within his party to step aside amid fears he can’t beat former President Donald Trump.

“I try to be philosophical,” Mr. Wilkie wrote of their advanced age. “We have been fortunate to have lived this long, but we are paying for our longevity. Most of the decisions that confront me in retirement are inconsequential. But a president faces crises every day.”

He said the man he’s known for more than half a century seems to have lost some of his judgment.

“During his long career, he made some hard, proper decisions that affected his future,” Mr. Wilkie wrote. “He emerged from the tragedy of the deaths of his wife and daughter [in a car accident in 1972] by accepting the challenge of serving in the Senate, and he bowed out of the presidential races of 1988, 2008 and 2016 gracefully and kept his honor intact for 2020. That wisdom is no longer evident.”