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Peggy Noonan devotes her weekly Wall Street Journal column of 2024 to “the decline of Joe Biden’s mental acuity.” In her last column of his final year in office, she takes notice that Biden is “The President who wasn’t there.” Published online today, it will appear in Saturday’s hard copy of the Journal tomorrow.

In this column Noonan takes note of Biden’s patent incompetence to perform as president. Noonan recounts the story of Woodrow Wilson’s final years when Edith Wilson filled the president’s shoes. Gene Smith provided a popular account of the story in When the Cheering Stopped (1964). Noonan draws on Scott Berg’s biography Wilson (2014). It is at least worth noting in this context that I have referred to Jill Biden as “Edith” in posts extending at least as far back as “Quotations from Dementia Joe” (September 13, 2020).

I wish some cynical editor at the Journal had headlined Noonan’s column This Just In. Although it appears to have escaped Noonan’s notice, Biden’s decline has been visible to observers at least since since the 2020 presidential campaign. Mark Halperin states that he observed Biden’s senility up close in 2017. He hammers on Biden’s calling out to deceased Rep. Jackie Walorski at a White House event in September 2022: “Where’s Jackie?” This was in public over two years ago.

Did Noonan miss this? Perhaps she swallowed KJP’s creative “explanation.”

Biden’s senility is a function of nature. We all understand what’s happening. It would be nice to know what accounts for Noonan’s mental oblivion, if that’s what it is, or shamelessness in ignoring the obvious until it has become respectable to expound on it.