Joe Biden delivered what turned out to be a valedictory speech from the Oval Office earlier tonight. The speech lasted a little over 10 minutes, and was perhaps his best public appearance in several weeks. The speech hit all the right notes, at least in terms of tone, even if it never actually explains how Biden went from insisting he would remain in the race as recently as a week ago to deciding to “pass the torch to the next generation.” Nor did we get any explanation of why Biden now thinks he shouldn’t run again, nor why he reached that decision after he ran in fifty primaries while his party excluded any serious challenge to his candidacy.
The delivery was pretty decent, but he still slurred his words at times and tripped over them at others. He looked more alert than in the debate and in his Oval Office speech last week after the assassination attempt on Donald Trump, but he also looked stiff and forced at times, too. There was little personal charisma coming through during any of the speech, perhaps a product of his disappointment at reaching this decision, or perhaps reflecting the enormous effort it now takes to deliver these remarks in a manner that doesn’t reflect any cognitive decline.
In the end, though, I tend to agree with Dana Perino’s assessment. This felt like the intro to a State of the Union speech, not an explanation of a bizarre sequence of events that brought us to this stage after Biden disappeared from view for a week. This settles nothing — not the cognition issue, not the strange withdrawal by letter and tweet, not the three days it took for Biden to get in front of a camera to explain it, nor even whether Biden changed his mind or got pushed out of a nomination he won. And it certainly won’t settle the issue of whether Biden is competent enough to remain in office now.
The full speech is below.
