One of the most vital skills of an elected official is to communicate clearly, understandably, and loudly enough (without shouting) so that people in the low-cost seats can hear what he has to say, whether he has a microphone or not.
Of course, politicians and candidates for public office are often deliberately vague when they speak, leaving themselves just enough wiggle room to be able to credibly deny their statements if they go too far. But other times, there are people who really want to get their message across but fail because captivating an audience is simply not their sturdy suit.
In the case of President Joe Biden, however, he is a mess all around, not only because he has never really been an effective communicator, but also because it is quite clear that he is no longer the one in charge (if he ever was), for reasons that should be obvious to almost everyone by now.
SEE ALSO: Confused Biden struggles to finish his words in Philadelphia
All this brings me to the latest column by left-wing New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd.
Unlike the other liberal authors on her list, Dowd has been critical of Joe Biden throughout his decades of public service, with one notable example being her July 2023 criticism of him for failing to pay attention to his granddaughter, Navy Roberts.
Recently, she pleaded with Biden, in her own way, to withdraw from the presidential race. But in her most recent column about Biden, she let slip something about one of her colleagues on the news site, White House correspondent Peter Baker, and the tactics she believes he must utilize to hear Joe Biden in his speech:
In addition, his speech is now slurred, so that words are jumbled and words and thoughts collide; words are dropped, caesuras are skipped, and sentences sometimes disappear into the ether.
The Times’ chief White House correspondent, Peter Baker, told me that when he travels abroad, he now uses headphones for translation, even when he’s standing 20 feet away from the president, because when Biden starts mumbling, the volume is louder.
A reporter from the American New York Times now needs translation technology to decipher what the President is saying IN ENGLISH. pic.twitter.com/x0f8gEXfO5
— Eddie Scarry (@eScarry) July 8, 2024
For any Democrat reading this who thinks Baker must be a “MAGA-friendly” reporter, I can assure you that he is most definitely not. Not only does he have an anti-Trump stance, Book under his belt, but he regularly spices up his Twitter feed with story teasers like this one:
One party has a candidate who is really aged and sees it. The other has a candidate who is a convicted felon, a convicted sex offender, a white collar fraudster and a self-proclaimed would-be dictator for a day. And also really aged. One party wants to replace its candidate. The other…
— Peter Baker (@peterbakernyt) July 5, 2024
So no, he is far from being a shill for Trump or the Republicans. Besides, this column has been out for three days now and he has had ample opportunity to deny or clarify what Dowd wrote about what he allegedly told her – which he has not done.
I would never have expected that reporters would have to utilize headphones with interpreters to be able to hear and understand the supposed leader of the free world. And yet it has happened.
A president must be heard and understood because everything he says can affect millions of people for better or worse for generations. The inability of some members of the press to hear or understand Biden’s statements is another on a long list of reasons why he should never have run in the first place.
And an even more frightening thought is that if reporters are no longer able to understand him, then that is a sign that his inner circle no longer understands him either. And that also explains the explosive report in the Wall Street Journal about the lengths his advisers have gone in their efforts to hide from voters what was clear about Biden from the start.
Related: We have an update on Joe Biden’s “coherence window” from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., and it’s not good
