The dullest assertion you can make about Donald Trump is that he’s a narcissist who has no interest in the American people and only cares about himself. Competent pundits don’t waste wordage on such an over-obvious observation.
Less obvious, though more so since last week’s dog’s dinner presidential debate — in the aftermath of which dubbing the encounter “elder abuse” went from droll witticism to exhausted cliché in a few hours — is that Joe Biden’s narcissism rivals Trump’s and may even exceed it.
The Bidens’ decision to contest this race was arrogant and criminally oblivious to the country’s future
Early in his 2020 run, Biden indicated to apparatchiks in private that if he was victorious in the forthcoming election, he would assume the presidency (at the ripe old age that Trump is now) as a caretaking one-termer, who would restore sanity to the Oval Office and then hand the baton to the next generation. True, he avoided making the promise publicly explicit, lest he be diminished as a lame duck. But in December 2019, Politico quoted a “prominent adviser to the campaign” as making another, or so you would think, over-obvious observation: “If Biden is elected, he’s going to be eighty-two-years-old in four years, and he won’t be running for re-election.”
So what happened? The stock line is that the president felt called to sacrifice another precious four years of his life to rescue his beloved country, because he’s the only Democrat in the nation who can defeat Trump and therefore save “democracy” (otherwise known as the Democratic Party). But polling established long ago that, rather, Biden was the one candidate Trump had the best chance of beating — and that any unnamed non-Biden candidate would have then defeated Trump handily (and saved “democracy”). In other words, if the Democrats ditched Biden, they could beat Trump with a toaster. Witness the post-debate panic in the Trump camp at the prospect of a roundly humiliated Biden dropping out.
As a cheerful cynic about human nature, I never buy this preening rhetoric about self-sacrifice from politicians. The language of the humble “public servant” seeking state power insults our intelligence. What truly drives people to run for high office? Raw personal ambition (which, granted, can be channelled for the greater good). A desire to win (ditto). Loathing for the opposition. A craving to be important. An often unlimited appetite for attention. An urge to dominate and control. A thirst for admiration, if not for sycophancy. Vanity. A savior complex (i.e., vanity). Financial greed. A frequently unjustified certainty that one’s opinions are correct (along with an expedient willingness to adopt contrary opinions, which also seem infallibly correct). To be fair, deeply held convictions, which are only public assets if a candidate’s beliefs aren’t barking. An attraction to the trappings of office: state banquets can be satisfying in and of themselves, and that lump crabmeat starter doubles as confirmation of one’s elevated status.
What’s conspicuously missing from that list? “A genuine hankering to make the world a better place,” though I might add a last big motivator: “a genuine hankering to be regarded by others as trying to make the world a better place.”
Last Thursday night, Biden claimed that it was 2017’s ragtag white nationalist march in Charlottesville that moved him to run in 2020: “singing the same antisemitic bile they sang when — back in Germany. And what did — and the young woman got killed. I spoke to the mother. And she — they asked him, they said, what — well, what do you think of those people, the people who — the one who — the ones who tried to stop it and the ones who said, I think there’s fine people on both sides?” (Painful, right?)
Trump returned: “He says he ran because of Charlottesville. He didn’t run because of Charlottesville. He ran because it was his last chance at — he’s not equipped to be president. You know it and I know it.” Trump couldn’t finish all his sentences, either, but he was right: Biden running in 2020 out of horror at antisemitism is a load of malarkey. He simply wanted to be president.
So why did Biden decide to run for a second term? He likes being president. It’s fun. The rarified status has fostered his conceit that he’s the sole person in the universe who can do the job. In the geopolitical present, being president of the United States is still tantamount to being President of the World, and what self-convinced politician wouldn’t want to remain President of the World? The increasingly disturbing Jill Biden is also in the mix here. Assuming you’re stuck playing second fiddle to anyone, who wouldn’t fancy being married to the President of the World?
The Bidens each have one life to live and it’s running out. Last spring, the couple faced a choice. As of 2025, they could spend the next four years being fêted, having their every need catered to, going to Big Important Meetings with other world leaders, powwowing at the very center of the action during momentous events, having their views solicited and being fawned over by journalists, celebrities and dignitaries. Or they could shuffle to the beach, yell at the television news like everyone else and maybe found a library (which sounds tedious). Not much of a contest — unless they sincerely cared about their compatriots.
Even if Biden bows to public and donor pressure to withdraw, he’s put his party on the back foot, and the process of selecting a replacement could be disastrous. He’s singlehandedly increased the likelihood of what’s ostensibly the end of the republic: a Trump victory.
For years, we’ve watched clips on YouTube in which Biden freezes, gapes, trips, wanders off and speaks such gibberish that he’s no longer pronouncing words but a blither of indiscernible syllables. The Bidens might have forced themselves to watch those clips, too, and faced the music: Joe is too senile for the presidency. The Bidens’ decision to contest this race was selfish, prideful, arrogant and, given the precipitous cognitive decay on international display last week, criminally oblivious to the future of the country they claim to love. Who’s the narcissist, really?
This article was originally published on The Spectator’s UK website.
