Joe Biden’s ‘Cognitive Fluctuations’
Last Thursday was not a good day for Joe Biden. During the president’s shaky and at times incoherent debate performance, he appeared weaker and frailer in real time than the American public had ever seen. Friday appears to have been a much better day. At a campaign rally in North Carolina, clips of which his campaign distributed online, the president seemed like an entirely different man. Lively and invigorated, he spoke with a ferocity that had eluded him on the debate stage.
Both his supporters and detractors have turned this yo-yoing into a talking point that has come up frequently that he “didn’t have my best debate night,” and his press secretary as the result of a cold rather than “an episode.” Indeed, earlier this year, at the State of the Union, Biden appeared much more lucid.
