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I’m dumbfounded by the Star Tribune’s reprint on Feb. 12 of a recent Wall Street Journal editorial titled “Biden’s doddering document defense.” It’s about special counsel Robert Hur’s nearly 400-page report concluding that charges against President Joe Biden for mishandling classified materials are unwarranted. Hur also opined that Biden had a “poor memory” and “diminished faculties.” The Star Tribune reprint spends little or no time on the charging decision and all time on the memory conclusions. Well, here’s the point: Hur is a lawyer, not a medical professional. He lacks any qualifications to determine or to arrive at medical conclusions of any kind concerning memory. Any conclusion that memory might be a defense before some future jury is pure nonlegal speculation.
As reported by Judd Legum in the newsletter Popular Information on Feb. 12, the Wall Street Journal (and hence the Star Tribune) reports Hur’s amateur medical judgments as a political crisis for Biden and an existential threat to his re-election campaign. Legum points out, “The actual threat to Biden’s political prospects is the deluge of negative media coverage based on Hur’s conjecture.” He also reports that “just three major papers — the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal — collectively published 81 articles about Hur’s assessment of Biden’s memory in the four days following the release of Hur’s report.” Only one of those stories mentioned a key fact, Legum says: Hur is completely unqualified to render a judgment on Biden’s mental capacity. The Wall Street Journal did not produce any articles explaining that Hur’s evaluation of Biden’s mental health has no medical basis. Nor does the Star Tribune.
David Fisher, Bloomington
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As one of the millions of Americans who is Biden’s age, I am puzzled that gerontologists and celebrity octogenarians are either silent or in denial since reading the recent report on Biden’s disorganized documents and related conversations. Our gray matter changes along with the graying of our hair. After a few decades we forget which year we began working at one company or another. We forget which safe place we put a new purchase last week. Naturally, if we live this long, we are going to be different from how we were at 35. A long-familiar name or word sometimes refuses to come to mind instantly.
Being an octogenarian is another adventure along life’s trails and travails. It would be refreshing for Biden and the first lady to be interviewed by a trusted journalist, with a trusted gerontologist consultant, and be candid about being eight decades old. I would like to see and hear them tell their observations and also laugh a little.
