My worrying encounter with Joe Biden

I met Joe Biden last month, after one of his town hall events in New Hampshire. His team had turned the music up loud, presumably so that 77-year-old Joe — the gaffe machine from Scranton, Pennsylvania — would not be recorded saying something stupid as he mingled with the fans and reporters. I shook Biden’s hand and — limey hack that I am — asked: ‘Mr Vice President, how, as President, would you approach Brexit Britain and Boris Johnson?’ ‘What?’ he said. I repeated the question, shouting this time. ‘What?’ he said again, smiling. His dentures were brilliant; his eyes mad blue. He had no idea what I was talking about. I tried one last time, screaming ‘Boris Johnson!’ in his ear. Somewhere deep in his psyche, something stirred. ‘Bori…,’ he said. Then the emptiness returned and he went to hug some old ladies.

It’s not fair to mock the elderly, and no doubt US politicians have far more pressing matters on their minds than Brexit. But Joe Biden is emerging as the Democratic party’s choice to be the next leader of the free world, and he’s clearly not all there.

A little over a week ago, Biden seemed finished. The socialist outsider Bernie Sanders looked unstoppable. Then Biden won in South Carolina and the race flipped. Two of Biden’s rivals in the so-called ‘moderate lane’, Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar, dropped out and endorsed him. The ‘Joementum’ carried on to Super Tuesday this week, as Biden notched up significant wins across the South and in Minnesota and Massachusetts. Sanders won in California, but he is now behind. Things could look even better for Biden if Michael Bloomberg now withdraws.

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Each day, however, Biden reveals a little more senility. This week, he lost his thread while trying to cite the Declaration of Independence: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, all men and women created by the … you know … you know, the thing.’