WASHINGTON — WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden tries to allay concerns about his cognitive abilities in public and in private.
But with public doubts about his fitness for the presidency continuing unabated, Biden’s every move is now under a microscope. Any missteps risk being magnified and could deal another blow to his candidacy.
Namely, when he introduced Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at a NATO summit on Thursday, messed up and called him “President Putin,” which drew audible gasps from the audience. He corrected himself, saying, “I’m so focused on defeating Putin” before giving up the podium. Shortly afterward, during a press conference, Biden said incorrectly referred to as “Vice President Trump” — a blunder that overshadowed the otherwise convincing performance of his staff.
And a considerably hyped interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos a week earlier was meant to show that Biden could handle critical questions from the media, but only led to more concerns among Democrats about whether he could remain the party’s nominee.
“When you raise the stakes in one interview, it can’t be another example of how hard you are to understand — not because he’s soft, not because he’s mumbling, but because his train of thought doesn’t make sense,” former Obama White House adviser Jon Lovett said this week on his podcast “Pod Save America,” referring to the Stephanopoulos interview.
Lovett continued: “Everyone says, why isn’t he there, why isn’t he there, why isn’t he there? He goes there, and he delivers this mediocre performance and it ends up being the absolute worst of both worlds.”
Still, there has been a consistent call from Democrats to bring Biden forward in more contingency situations. shocked by his 90-minute debate on June 27 and want assurances that the performance was an unusual blip and not a sign of a broader mental decline. They want the handshakes, the happy interactions, the long-lasting exchanges with journalists that has been characteristic of Biden, especially during his 36 years in the Senate.
He has been hopping from one event to another since: chatting with supporters in a restaurant in Detroit; mobilizing voters in Wisconsin; stopping at a coffee shop in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania; answered some questions from donors, lawmakers and mayors in private virtual conversations. He hosted Democratic governors at the White House while stepping up his pace of news interviews, including with Stephanopoulos, the Houston Chronicle and NBC News, which will air Monday.
“There are a number of us who were cheering on the campaign before the debate and urging the campaign to let Joe be Joe,” said Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Calif., one of the lawmakers who spoke privately with Biden after his disastrous debate performance.
Padilla added: “Let him loose, without a script — whether it’s town hall meetings or rallies, whatever — that’s at his best, that’s the Joe Biden that most people in America have come to know and love.”
Yet some of his recent forays and encounters have produced puzzling results.
In the Stephanopoulos interview, Biden said, “I don’t think so, no,” when asked if he had watched a replay of the debate. He noted to governors that he needed to get more sleep and limit evening activities — a comment that, even if delivered in jest, did not conjure up the image of an energetic commander in chief.
During an interview with WURD radio in Philadelphia, Biden stumbled and said, “I’m proud to be, as I said, the first vice president, the first Black woman to serve with a Black president” — mixing up some of his oft-used lines about being proud to serve with the first Black president and to choose the first Black woman as vice president. The slip-up came even after it emerged that the interviewer had asked questions specifically posed by the Biden campaign.
Biden has certainly not been known as a flawless politician in his decades in public life; his convivial political style has often been marked by verbal gaffes. But letting Biden get out there more often is a risk his advisers are willing to take, and it’s worth it.
“Joe Biden has been making blunders for 40 years. He made a few last night. He’s likely to continue making blunders,” Biden campaign communications director Michael Tyler said on Air Force One as the president traveled to Detroit on Friday. “Our opponent is someone who stands on the stump every day calling for a bloodbath if he loses, who is begging to rule as a dictator on day one, who is promising to ban abortion across the country.”
Biden’s allies and advisers argue that his direct engagement since the debate — whether with voters who dropped in unexpectedly during his travels or with dozens of mayors across the country, none of whom raised concerns about his fitness for office — has proven that the president is still fit for office.
During a call with mayors Wednesday night, Mayor Andy Schor of Lansing, Michigan, noted that while many mayors held their hands up during the Zoom call, Mayor Kate Gallego of Phoenix ended the session after answering just three questions. Still, Schor noted that Biden was “repeating off one thing after another,” everything the mayors wanted to hear, and “he wasn’t really doing it with notes.”
“He’s going to run and I think we should all support him,” Schor told The Associated Press.
Satya Rhodes-Conway, mayor of Madison, Wisconsin, said she was struck by how much detail Biden provided on policy matters. She added: “I didn’t realize the president was a policy nerd.”
Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) has also stressed that Biden must do more to convince voters that his debate performance was a one-off.
“I don’t think he or the campaign should be shy about engaging directly with voters or the media in an unplanned way,” he said. “Part of what’s made Joe Biden so endearing and popular is his occasional gaffes, because he’s willing to talk in an authentic, casual way that a lot of politicians aren’t willing to do.”
At Biden’s rally in Madison, Lisa Gellings and her son Tim sat in a crowded room to watch his remarks. Then the president dropped by unexpectedly. For them, seeing Biden in person was a far cry from his halting performance at the debate in Atlanta.
“He’s not the best on TV,” he said. “He’s much better this way, when he’s talking to us.”
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Associated Press reporters Lisa Mascaro in Washington, Scott Bauer and Colleen Long in Madison, Wisconsin, and Joey Cappelletti in Lansing, Michigan, contributed to this report.