The national discussion needs to shift back to where it should be: on Trump’s fitness for office.

Follow this authorDana Milbank's opinions

Thus did Trump celebrate his willingness to squander the deterrence that has kept the peace for decades, and instead to abandon allies to the tender mercies of Vladimir Putin, who just bombed a children’s hospital in Ukraine. Trump says he’ll make Ukraine “settle” with the invading Russians, a surrender that Biden would never allow.

This is exactly what the presidential campaign should be about at this perilous moment: the choice between strong American leadership and appeasement, between democracy and dictatorship.

Advertisement

But this is no longer what the campaign is about. The heavy-handed attempt to force Biden to quit the race after his disastrous debate has, predictably, backfired. Biden has dug in, pitting “elites” against the people. Democrats are fighting among themselves. George Clooney is diagnosing Biden’s mental competence (he played Dr. Doug Ross on “ER,” after all). And Republicans can hardly believe their good fortune, as they portray Biden as a zombie — with no good answer to their attacks.

Trump’s Doral rally was full of endless variations on the “Weekend at Bernie’s” theme. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), now in the final round of auditions to become Trump’s running mate, warmed up the crowd by identifying a “conspiracy” to hide Biden’s mental condition. He went on: “We know he’s not calling the shots. … Look, the guy’s a figurehead for a shadow government of leftists that are propping him up.”

Then came Donald Trump Jr. “We’re running against a party that wants to take away your AR-15, but they gave a vegetable the nuclear codes,” he began. He tried another: “If Joe Biden showed up to pick you up in an Uber, would you get in the car? … Would you let your worst enemy get in that car? Maybe. Maybe. Dumb ways to die, right folks?”

Advertisement

Trump lawyer Alina Habba sampled a line on the crowd: “He cannot spell ‘Bob’ backwards.”

And Trump himself made Biden’s purported feeblemindedness — always an element of his stump speech — the dominant theme. He mockingly challenged Biden to another debate. Pretending to be Biden struggling with a golf club, he also challenged the president to an 18-hole match, offering Biden a 20-stroke lead. “They all knew this guy was grossly incompetent, and every Democrat in the House and the Senate was in on it,” he alleged. “It was a scam. The American people can never trust this group of liars ever again. They put our country at great risk and danger.”

Trump joked about Biden taking naps and struggling to lift a beach chair. He floated the idea that “Hunter is in the White House running government right now, they say.” Seizing on an Axios report that Biden is only “dependably engaged” between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m., Trump claimed: “He can’t work because he’s mentally no good. He’s shot.”

Advertisement

The insults continued. “Cognitively impaired.” “Mentally incompetent.” “In no condition to lead.” Biden “has no idea where the hell he is.” His “facelift didn’t work.” As for Biden’s (accurate) argument that Trump threatens democracy, Trump said Biden “doesn’t even know what the hell the term is.”

“He has no clue what he’s doing or where he is, and next will be World War III because he doesn’t know what he’s doing,” Trump accused.

Alas, this is what the rest of the campaign is likely to be about if Biden remains in the race. Some of this is the fault of congenitally anxious Democrats and their allies rushing to force him from the race, which has understandably caused Biden to resist. Some is the fault of my colleagues in the news media, breathlessly keeping a deathwatch and tallying the (relatively few) Democratic lawmakers who have publicly called for him to quit. But Biden created this situation when his stunning debate collapse left serious and legitimate doubts about his fitness.

Advertisement

It’s not at all clear that Democrats would be better off without Biden on the ticket. But this much is clear: As president, Biden has invariably acted in the best interest of the country. I suspect that, if he sees more data coming in showing that he no longer can beat Trump, he will graciously bow out. If he does so, he will be remembered for the most substantial record of accomplishment of any president in decades. If he holds on in the face of mounting evidence that he can’t win, he will be remembered for selfishness — a trait incompatible with his character.

In a news conference Thursday night after the NATO summit, Biden reiterated his determination to stay in the race, but he was not categorical. At the very end of the hour-long session, he suggested he would reconsider his candidacy if his advisers “came back and said, ‘there’s no way you can win.’” He quickly added: “No poll says that.” But he acknowledged that “a lot can happen” over the next four months, and he accurately stated the Democrats’ predicament: “There are other people who could beat Trump, too, but it’s awful hard to start from scratch.”

Biden was solid and clear during the session, discussing foreign policy in fluid detail. But any benefit from that may have been lost when he said “Vice President Trump” when he meant “Vice President Harris,” after earlier introducing Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky as “President Putin.” Predictably, almost all of the questioners asked him about his mental acuity and the wisdom of remaining in the race.

At the moment, it’s difficult to see the national discussion shifting back to where it should be: on Trump’s fitness for office.

Advertisement

This week, the MAGA-occupied Republican National Committee forced through a “platform” that looks more like one of Trump’s social media posts, in all caps and with curious punctuation. Only two of 20 items in the platform get exclamation points: “NO TAX ON TIPS!” and “MAKE AMERICA THE DOMINANT ENERGY PRODUCER IN THE WORLD, BY FAR!” This implies that both of those priorities are more important than, say, “PREVENT WORLD WAR THREE” and “DEFEND OUR CONSTITUTION,” which were not so punctuated. It abolished any mention of the national debt and tiptoed........

© Washington Post