Cognitively Challenged? “Hidin’ Biden” Shrugs Off Cognitive Assessment Testing

Cognitively Challenged? “Hidin’ Biden” Shrugs Off Cognitive Assessment Testing

In a recent interview with CBS News reporter Errol Barnett, former Vice President Joe Biden scoffed at the notion that he should submit to the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) Test, in order to dispel any doubts about his cognitive abilities.

“No, I haven’t taken a test. Why the hell would I take a test?” Biden answered, in an interview scheduled to air Thursday at the convention of the National Association of Black Journalists and National Association of Hispanic Journalists.

Biden went on, turning the question around on the unsuspecting Barnett, saying “C’mon, man… that’s like saying you, before you got on this program, you take a test where you’re taking cocaine or not. What do you think? Huh? Are you a junkie?”

Biden’s response, which some have claimed reveals his own stereotype against people of color, didn’t seem to mesh with an earlier claim he made to Fox News’ Doug McKelway in June, when answering a similar question regarding his own mental acuity.

“I’ve been tested, and I’m constantly tested.” Well, that was then, and this is now, six weeks later… we s’pose…

Tested or not, one could reasonably claim that the need for the former Vice President to be cognitively tested is perhaps long overdue, given his peculiar penchant for malaprops and misstatements. Let’s face it… former President Barack Obama’s “number two” seems to step in “number two” anytime he is faced with a question for which he isn’t previously scripted.  Biden also has a nasty tendency to get his dander up at any question which, in his mind, seems the least bit critical in nature. This lack of loquaciousness, coupled with his minimal fuse, makes Biden far different than the icy Obama, who was quite precise in the words he offered up, and who quite adeptly used his oratory to conceal hidden agenda within his own lofty rhetoric.

Not that his former boss was ever really challenged during the eight years of his extended honeymoon with the White House press corps (that’s “corps” Barack, not “corpse”). Imagine just five minutes, of either Biden or Obama, under the identical questioning to which President Trump is regularly subjected. Obama would walk away at the first hint of critical interrogatory, and it’s no stretch to suggest that Biden, under Trump’s daily ordeals with the media, would someday snap and physically accost the media member who lit his “fuse.”

As for the current President, he will answer any question posed with neither regard for prose nor subterfuge- we all know exactly what President Trump thinks, whether we like it or not. No one can accuse “the Donald” of trying to hide what he really means, after all.

Be all of this as it may, the fact is that Trump shows absolutely no sign of age-related cognitive deterioration, as he is essentially the same Donald Trump we all first saw back in the late 1970s when he was making a name for himself in commercial real estate and self-promotion. Millions of dollars and decades later, the President is still just as brash and, okay, just as “cocky,” as he was forty-some years ago. More to the point, Trump passed MoCA, the “gold standard” of cognitive deterioration assessment, with a perfect score during his yearly physical at the Bethesda Naval Hospital, earlier in the spring.

Biden, on the other hand, is clearly not the same Joe Biden that whispered in Obama’s ear- loud enough to be overheard- that passage of his Affordable Care Act (ObamaCare) in 2010 was a “big f#@*in’ deal.” He still retains the penchant for saying the wrong thing at the wrong time, but anyone other than an ardent Biden supporter is lying if they say he hasn’t lost quite an edge in the ten years that have followed.

Perhaps, the obvious deterioration of his abilities is the result of his age, or perhaps it is the result of two surgeries on aneurysms (one on each side of his brain) back in 1988. Perhaps, the combined effects of losing his first wife and daughter to a tragic automobile accident in 1972, and the loss of his son to brain cancer in 2015, has proved to be far too much personal tragedy for this one man to endure. Then again, it might well be that all of these factors have played a cumulative role in making the Joe Biden that we see, today, and there is no doubt that he has had much to deal with in his personal life- far more than most fathers and husbands.

Our sympathies aside, we also realize that the United States presidency is one office which rises above even personal tragedy and tribulation- the one office whose occupant must be able to set aside personal strife and shoulder on in a hostile world. Presidents must be able to intelligently assess problems and crises which arise, and form effective plans of action with which to address these challenges. The current President, Donald Trump, has shown again and again, that he has the “goods” to effectively respond to such challenges, for he is nothing, if not a problem-solver.

Yet, as long as the Democrat nominee for President of the United States refuses to leave his Delaware residence- all under the guise of coronavirus- “Hidin’ Biden” will continue to arouse suspicions that he is no longer “all there.” Even far beyond the wide divide that separates the platforms of these two candidates, the question of national security- as it relates to this fall’s election- has never been so profoundly prescient, the ramifications of which are unlike any we have ever seen, before. While some may be flirting with the desire for a change in leadership, such a flirtation may end up resulting in the demise of our nation- one that would assuredly accompany Joe Biden’s election.

Yes, it’s all about November… It’s all about November.

-Drew Nickell, 6 August 2020

© 2020 by Drew Nickell, all rights reserved.

author of “Bending Your Ear- a Collection of Essays on the Issues of Our Times”

http://www.drewnickell.com

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