Yet Again, Is It Dementia?

The conventional wisdom, pretety much across the board, insists that Biden suffers from dementia -- but let's look at that term. According to this site,

It is not a single disease, but a general term for a range of conditions, including Alzheimer's disease. These conditions are caused when healthy brain cells are damaged and lose connections with each other.

As these changes in the brain occur, they may worsen over time. They may lead to problems with memory, thinking, and behavior, which can affect activities of daily life.

These changes in the brain can also cause hallucinations and delusions. In the United States, about 1 in 3 people with dementia may experience these symptoms.

As far as I can see, Biden has never, at least in public, shown evidence of hallucinations or delusions. He may stumble climbing the stairs to Air Force One, but he's pretty plainly aware that he is in fact climbing the stairs to Air Force One. He's fully aware that he's President of the United States, which is not a delusion. As far as I can tell, he's never credibly behaved as though he's speaking to someone who isn't there. He always appears to be aware that he's delivering a speech, say, or conducting a press conference, even if he's not good at it. (If he misspeaks and says he's in Toledo instead of Louisville, just about anyone would occasionally make that mistake, given a hectic travel schedule, and it may even be on the teleprompter.)

He's a poor communicator, but even his rhetorical incoherence is goal-driven and to some extent can even be characterized as weaponized incompetence, a feature of passive-aggressive behavior, not dementia. His tendency to blame his staff, the media, or Republicans for his own shortcomings neverthteless reflects an inkling that those issues exist and require some explanation or excuse. What's the real issue?

Let's look at a couple of recent vignettes. The first is reports of remarks about Ukraine President Zelensky at a Los Angeles fundraiser:

President Joe Biden told donors at a fundraising event in Los Angeles on Friday that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky “didn’t want to hear it” when U.S. officials warned him of the Feb. 24 Russian invasion. “Nothing like this has happened since World War II,” Biden said, according to the Associated Press. “I know a lot of people thought I was maybe exaggerating. But I knew we had data to sustain [Putin] was going to go in, off the border. There was no doubt, and Zelensky didn’t want to hear it,” he said.

This clearly irritated Ukraine's leadership. The story continues,

In response, Zelensky’s spokesperson Serhiy Nykyforov told Ukrainian news website LIGA.net that Zelensky spoke with Biden three or four times before the invasion, and Ukraine had called for preventive sanctions but Western allies “didn’t want to hear us.” Zelensky adviser Mykhailo Podolyak also expressed his dislike for Biden’s phrasing, telling the news outlet it was “absurd to blame a country that for more than 100 days has effectively been fighting in a full-scale war against a much more resourceful opponent, if the key countries weren’t able to preventatively stop the militaristic appetites of Russia, knowing them perfectly well.”

What Biden was doing here is fairly common among people of a certain type at any age: they tell anecdotes portraying themselves as the heroes, even the saviors, in certain situations, simultaneously denigrating other people who were involved. Biden did this in an exclusive environment of wealthy donors that he felt would be a sympathetic audience. (It sounds as if one or two were nevertheless sufficiently unimpressed to leak the episode.)

Or another vignette from his trip to LA last weekend:

President Joe Biden was asked whether he had decided to visit Saudi Arabia to beg the leaders there to release more oil. “Have you decided whether or not to go to Saudi Arabia,” a reporter asked Biden.

“No, not yet,” the president said.

. . . “What would be holding up the decision at this point? Are there commitments that you’re waiting for from the Saudis?” a reporter asked.

“It happens to be a larger meeting taking place in Saudi Arabia. That’s the reason I’m going,” he said. “It has to do with national security for them [and] for Israelis … It has to do with much larger issues than having to do with the energy.”

The subtext of the exchange is that Biden is operating at a much higher level than the reporter understands. If the thought was that he'd be traveling only to beg the Saudis for oil, that was a huge mistake. The whole thing is about much larger issues than just oil.

This reflects what I've been saying about Biden all along, he believes he's operating at a level of realpolitik beyond the understanding of ordinary men. This may be maladaptive thinking, but given he's President of the United States, it isn't delusional in the sense that I might believe I'm Luke Skywalker. Nevertheless, it's at least not humble. Even someone like Lincoln, fully aware of the terrible authority he was forced to wield, characterized himself in down-to-earth terms. Biden in contrast is grandiose beyond his station but not specifically delusional.

This brings me to the N-word, in this case, narcissism. The problem with it, as I've said before, is that it carries a clinical and diagnostic connotation that makes people think they've accomplished something when they use it, but it's actually meaningless. If a Catholic priest refers to the seven deadly sins, we know exactly what he means. If even a credentialed YouTuber refers to the seven types of narcissism, it can mean anything, and another credentialed YouTuber can issue a completely different list.

So if I call Joe Biden a "grandiose narcissist", it may sound like I've accomplished something, although I'm not a mental health professional, and I haven't actually interviewed him. On the other hand, if I toss out the "narcissist" part and just call him "grandiose" I may even be a little closer to the mark. People of any age can be grandiose. It's a problem, but it's not a medical condition. It's an issue of character.

Maybe an even more specific diagnostic term might be tinhorn:

Pretending to have money, influence, ability, etc., though actually lacking in these; cheap and showy.

A petty braggart who pretends to be rich and important.

But the 25th Amendment is not the cure.