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Ahead of the 2022 midterm elections, President Joe Biden was only too pleased to treat Sen. Rick Scott’s policy blueprint like a pinata. The Florida Republican responded, not by defending his plan, and not by attacking the White House’s policy agenda, but by going after the president in ugly and personal terms.
“Let’s be honest here: Joe Biden is unwell,” Scott said. “He’s unfit for office. He’s incoherent, incapacitated, and confused. He doesn’t know where he is half the time.”
The rhetoric was caustic and unfair, but it was also familiar. Republicans are heavily invested in telling the public that the president, because he’s 80, is weak and feeble. Indeed, when then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy launched a debt ceiling crisis in the spring, and demanded meetings with Biden, the California Republican offered to bring “lunch to the White House, and I would make it soft food if that’s what he wants.”
At least, that’s what the public heard the GOP leader say. As Politico reported, McCarthy said something different in private.
On a particularly sensitive matter, McCarthy mocked Biden’s age and mental acuity in public, while privately telling allies that he found the president sharp and substantive in their conversations — a contradiction that left a deep impression on the White House.
The fact that McCarthy was impressed with Biden after their private interactions shouldn’t surprise anyone. In fact, this has been common throughout the Democrat’s term to date.
Politico reported a couple of years ago, for example, that while some on the far-right remain fixated on trying to characterize the president as an addled old man, “seven GOP senators who’ve met with Biden lately described him as cogent and well-versed on the issues they discussed.”
“In the two meetings I was in with the president, he was as sharp as a tack,” Republican Sen. Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia said. Republican Sen. Todd Young of Indiana added, “I visited with him in the Oval Office, and he seemed well-prepared and well-briefed for the meeting.”
Around the same time, Republican Sen. Roger Wicker of Mississippi, following a White House meeting with Biden, told reporters, “The president was highly engaged, did most of the talking — or, did a lot of the talking.”
Stepping back, there are a couple of broad angles to keep in mind. The first is that the chatter on the right about the president being a confused old man is offensive, but it’s also badly at odds with the impressions from Republicans who’ve actually interacted with Biden.
But the second is a related angle that’s often overlooked: Lawmakers who meet with Biden come away with far fewer concerns than lawmakers who met with his predecessor. Remember all the reports from Donald Trump’s presidency about officials who found him to be “sharp as a tack,” and “well-prepared and well-briefed”?
Neither do I.