In the increasingly pitched coverage of President Joe Biden and the question of whether he has mentally declined to the point of needing to be replaced on the 2024 presidential ticket, conspiracies and collusions seem to be around every corner.

One theory goes that the Biden team and perhaps even the broader Democratic party have long known that the president is in no condition to run, and took great pains to conceal that fact. Another is that Biden’s family are at fault, and that a scheming wife is Lady MacBeth-ing his refusal to drop out. Another is that Biden’s difficulties are largely an invention of a cynical media who are determined to take down a good president because Donald Trump is better for clicks and ratings. And yet another is that reporters knew or should have known about Biden’s decline this whole time and have been refusing to report it out of liberal bias or perhaps professional incompetence.

Something far more mundane might actually be the case: Most people—staff, family, the media—were doing what they thought was correct and professionally responsible at the time. But after Biden’s debate performance raised legitimate questions about his capabilities, and after the thing that felt impossible—replacing him on the ticket—broke into the mainstream, the rationale for protecting the president weakened, ideas of responsibility changed, and normal human emotions (frustration, fear, betrayal) crept in.

It’s probably not entirely clear to anyone—including his closest advisors and even family—just how mentally sharp Biden remains. The man is 81, and if he wins reelection and lives through a second term, will be 86 when he leaves office. As anyone who has been close to an elder as they walk the precipice between “old but doing fine” and “old and no longer fine” can tell you, it’s generally impossible to identify the exact moment when an elderly person slips from one side to the other—and often, the realization that decline is severe enough for intervention to be merited comes too late. The closer we are to people, and the more often we see them, the less we notice the shifts that may seem jarring to those who haven’t been in their company for several months.

This almost surely better explains the Biden family encouraging their patriarch to stay in the race than the (blatantly misogynistic) theory that Jill Biden—who has never displayed any political aspirations, is hardly a fixture of the Washington social scene, and seems much more content teaching her students and being with her family at home in Delaware—is some sort of Lady MacBeth clinging to power by manipulating her weakened husband.

The Biden team and professional inner circle have fewer excuses, and more reason........

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