What Nobody's Mentioned About Joe's Hanoi Presser

In last Wedneseday's post, I looked at some length into Joe's speech patterns in his address as he awarded the Medal of Honor to Cpt Larry Taylor at the White House on September 7. I concluded that the features of Joe's delivery, which included stammering, stuttering, tripping over words, sudden extra care in enunciation, sudden slowing, and slurring, are also all features of intioxicated speech, as outlined by linguistic studies, police officers' training ane experience, and simple common-sense observation, although Joe, like Speaker Emerita Pelosi, claims not to drink.

After I posted this, though, I began to notice that there have been occasional instances where Joe was able to speak quite clearly, without the markers suggesting he was intoxicated, most notably during the presidential debates with Donald Trump in the fall of 2020. In fact, I was going to link a clip from one of those at the top of today's post but then I realized I had a much more recent example, his press conference in Hanoi on September 10. The YouTube link at the top of this post contains excerpts from those remarks.

There's no question that the contents are as embarrassing as ever, from his reprise of "lying dogfaced pony soldier", to "I ain't calling on you", to "Third World, er, Global South", to "I'm going to go to bed.". But the one feature that was missing in Hanoi was the markers of intoxicated speech, stammering, stuttering, tripping over words, sudden extra care in enunciation, sudden slowing, and slurring. His enunciation was clear, and his pace, if slow, was consistent, without stuttering or hypercorrection. He was clearly tired, which led some observers to question whether he was up to the job, but he wasn't talking as though his BAC was somewhere north of the legal limit.

Rare as this is, it's an indication that he can avoid sounding like he's drunk if he wishes, or at least if his handlers can keep him away from the sauce for a brief period. But even without the evidence of the Hanoi presser, it suddenly dawned on me after last Wednesday's post that of course Joe is drunk at most of his public appearances, despite his claim to the Holy Father that he's "the only Irishman you've ever met who's never had a drink". He lies about everything, and he lies about that.

What was also notable about his performance in Hanoi was that, if you took away the intoxicated speech patterns, everything else remained. He didn't stutter, but he was still confused:

“I’ll just follow my orders here. Staff, is there anybody that hasn’t spoken yet? I ain’t calling on you,” Biden said at another point during the presser Sunday.

According to Newsweek,

Biden, who has been blasted by conservatives for the "rambling" nature of his answers to questions about his recent meeting with Chinese Premier Li Qiang at the G20 summit in New Delhi, India, was cut off by Karine Jean-Pierre. The president, 80, left the stage shortly afterwards.

. . . "We talked about stability," Biden said about his conversation with China's second in command. "We talked about making sure that the third world, excuse me, the southern hemisphere, had access to change and access. It wasn't confrontational at all."

I've also seen comments that it wasn't a coincidence that Joe's schedule put him in Alaska for 9/11 commemorations, since any more visible commemoration would simply have led to greater embarrassment. Unfortunatle4y, it looks as though whatever his handlers could do to keep him sober on that trip didn't help his overall performance -- even if he's sober, that just makes his dumb remarks easier to understand.

The Democrats' problem continues to be that Joe is the last nationally unifying figure who represents the old New Deal coalition, however poorly he represents it, and however poorly he does his job overall. After Joe, it's the warring leftist splinter groups who won't settle on a consensus candidate. This is one reason Joe can't leave the race, although another is simply Joe's own ego and grandiosity.