Is President Biden too frail to run the White House for another four years? Is Donald Trump too unpredictable? Long before the special counsel report added a blast of oxygen to the ever-smoldering discussion of presidential fitness, my feeds were full of questions like these, and I imagine yours were, too. So on this week of "Matter of Opinion," the hosts ask: what does it mean to be a "fit" president? Read an edited, condensed excerpt from the conversation below, and listen to the full episode here. Lydia Polgreen: One of the things that I've noticed about Trump, and when he flubs something or misspeaks, sometimes his bizarre statements often seem more like Freudian slips than poor memory. But there is this way in which Trump somehow, as he clearly has just done to me, convinces you to think that he's crazy like a fox. Whereas with Biden, it just sort of feels substantively different. Michelle Goldberg: It's important to remember that people like us care a lot more about how eloquently these guys speak. Newt Gingrich was not wrong on some level when he praised Trump for speaking at a level that a fifth grader could understand. I remember this back during the campaign between Al Gore and George W. Bush. Bush was famous for Bushisms, Gore was much wonkier and more articulate. If there is one thing that the American electorate cannot abide, it is a politician sounding like he is talking down to them. So Trump not being able to make a coherent speech plays pretty well in a lot of corners. Ross Douthat: Part of the issue here is how much has each man changed over the last five, six, seven, eight years? The question is, how different is 2024 Trump from 2016 Trump? He rambles, he gets names wrong, he says sentences that don't make sense. But he did that in 2016 too. Has he really changed that much? Whereas the issue for Biden, I think, is that he seems more diminished relative to a prior status quo than does Trump. Michelle: It boils down to Trump seems crazy and Biden seems frail and America prefers crazy a lot of the time. Carlos Lozada: I worry that this election is shaping up into a contest between the unfit and the unwell. I see Trump as unfit for office for reasons that have nothing to do with his age or the way he speaks. It's because of his character and his actions and his beliefs. But if Trump's unfitness is about who he is, Biden's is about who he's becoming. It's hard to say that he's been unfit for the job so far. The question for us as voters, is whether we think he will remain well enough to endure the rigors of this incredibly demanding job. Evan Osnos wrote a good book about Biden in 2020, and asked Biden about the age issue back then. "'I think it's totally legitimate for people to raise it,' Biden said. 'And I'll just say, look at me. Decide.'" Listen to the episode:
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Monday, February 19, 2024
Opinion Today: Who’s afraid of an unfit president?
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