Editor,
Having family at Whidbey Island, I agree with several letter writers. It was bad enough that Joe Biden’s mental acuity deteriorated before our eyes in the last three-quarters of his term. His mental health-status cannot be palmed-off. He shirked his duties as president and had a cloud of unknown people covering for him, making his decisions, illegally using an autopen to sign laws and grant pardons. If he were a plain-jane lawyer or accountant, his boss would have booted him out. Unfortunately, the Cabinet nor the Congress had the courage. It took “we the people” seeing his zombie-like incoherence in an unfiltered debate. His babble isn’t just garbled-talk, it is messed up thinking.
When Biden and his wife Jill flew away to California on Jan. 20, I hoped he would take it easy out of the limelight. He could enjoy the beach, or a game of checkers at the senior center or attend meetings of the prince hall lodge he is said to have joined. If he joined so recently, why not attend and relax?
It is odd that instead of retiring and mellowing to “Joe Biden private-citizen,” he has relapses of cognition and bizarrely thinks he is still on the world stage. In bygone years, it sort of made me cringe when camera-crews would show Biden sneaking up behind strange women or little girls and kissing their necks or sniffing their hair. If it were a one-time only affair, it could be chalked-up as an eccentric. Yet, even Catholic Bishops have chided him on his deviating morality.
Just days ago, that 82-year-old Biden made the bellicose statement that he could supposedly “beat the hell out of” 56-year-old reporter and author Jake Tapper. I don’t think so!! Biden’s detail should have grabbed a straight-jacket and taken him to a padded psychiatric-cell at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware. During the debate, Biden boasted: “We finally beat Medicare.” Why is he always resorting to violent metaphors? The man is seriously disturbed, in dotage and frail in body and mind.
Every time Biden gets out in the public, he ruins his own image and deepens the public’s angst about him. Biden overestimates himself and he is more and more pretentious.I feel sorry for his prostate-cancer, but he’s senile. He needs help. History won’t treat him kindly if he continues self-inflicted potshots.
James Marples
Longview, Texas
