By SUZANNE DOWNING

All is not well in the inner world of President Joe Biden. For a full third of July, the president took a break, leisurely spending days puttering at his $2.74 million beach house in Rehoboth, Delaware.

During this period, he didn’t engage in official travel, such as factory inaugurations, fair visits, military inspections, or supply chain briefings. He wasn’t even out in public licking ice cream cones. Instead, he was parked under an umbrella on the beach, his wife by his side to prevent any wandering off or child sniffing. The regime news media pretty much left him alone.

As August arrived, President Biden had already used up 40% of his time in office on vacation, albeit working vacations, with a few phone meetings, according to his official calendar.

Yes, the president has been phoning it in for much of his first term.

Biden has now returned to his presidential duties, but his workdays are brief, and his interactions with the media are short-lived. His time before cameras is kept short.

This week, Biden embarked on a tour of the Southwest, with the first stop in Arizona, a battleground state. There, he used his executive power to designate nearly one million acres as national monument land, saying he was addressing historical injustices towards Native Americans.

This move resulted in the cessation of any new uranium mining in the area, which unfortunately leaves the nation reliant on foreign sources, specifically Russia and satellite countries like Kazakhstan, for a crucial national security mineral.

Biden’s speech in Arizona was brief and predictable, touching on his criticisms of Republicans and their MAGA ways, as well as his consistent harping on climate change. However, even this routine speech had its flaws, as the mention of the Grand Canyon as one of the “Nine Wonders of the World” stirred controversy and led to the need for damage control efforts by his press office.

At his next speech highlighting the successes of Bidenomics in New Mexico, he seemed to suddenly start whispering and babbling incoherently, something that occurs with greater frequency as he tires.

Although carefully scripted, Biden’s Southwest swing could not hide the physical fragility and cognitive decline of the leader of the free world. His shuffling gait and unclear sentences are now widely recognized indications of his deteriorating dementia.

Throughout his tour, there was a noticeable absence of challenging questions from regime-approved reporters. Sensitive topics like a bag of cocaine found in the West Wing, legal issues faced by his son, or allegations of political interference with the Department of Justice’s attacks on his greatest political rival, Donald Trump, remain unaddressed.

This is likely the best condition we can expect to see Biden in, as he approaches his 81st birthday on Nov. 20, a mere 100 days away. It’s unrealistic to anticipate that his coherence will improve over the next four years.

Aging impacts individuals differently, and I don’t mean to imply that elderly individuals cannot think or communicate effectively. However, there are undeniable signs that Biden’s abilities are, in fact, diminishing rapidly.

In response to his deterioration, there appears to be a gradual introduction of the Kamala Harris backup plan. She’s now in the batting cage, as she will need to assume a more prominent role by the midterm elections.

Yet, the Democratic Party recognizes that Harris presents a challenge for American voters. Americans don’t really like the unserious vice president.

Since the onset of Biden’s presidency, efforts have been made to manage the narrative around Harris, downplaying her propensity for gaffes, which are similar to Vice President Dan Quayle’s own verbal goofs during George H.W. Bush’s administration. While Quayle’s gaffes were relatively concise (“Republicans understand the importance of bondage between a mother and child,”) at least he kept his sentences short. 

There’s a Quayle-level solecism, and then there’s Vice President Harris describing the very nature of time itself:

“The governor and I, we were all doing a tour of the library here and talking about the significance of the passage of time, right, the significance of the passage of time. So, when you think about it, there is great significance to the passage of time in terms of what we need to do to lay these wires. What we need to do to create these jobs. And there is such great significance to the passage of time when we think about a day in the life of our children.”

With the mumbler-in-chief and his giggling gaffe-machine at the top of the ticket, the Democratic Party is not presenting the best of what their party could offer America in terms of leadership during the difficult days ahead, and this will impact all their candidates down the ballot.

For Democrats to win in 2024, Vice President Harris is going to have to be much more tightly controlled and President Biden will have to be sent back to the basement, where he spent most of 2020. Even then, this ticket looks less viable with each passing day.

Suzanne Downing is publisher of Must Read Alaska.