{"id":115209,"date":"2025-05-19T20:15:08","date_gmt":"2025-05-19T20:15:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/115209\/"},"modified":"2025-05-19T20:15:08","modified_gmt":"2025-05-19T20:15:08","slug":"joe-biden-did-not-decline-alone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/115209\/","title":{"rendered":"Joe Biden did not decline alone"},"content":{"rendered":"<p data-component=\"paragraph\" class=\"css-1l5amll e1y9q0ei0\">Accept, for a moment, Joe Biden\u2019s contention that he is as mentally as sharp as ever. Then try to explain some revelations of the books beginning to appear about his presidency: that he never held a formal meeting to discuss whether to run for a second term; that he never heard directly from his own pollsters about his dismal public standing, or anything else; that by 2024 most of his own cabinet secretaries had no contact with him; that, when he was in Washington, he would often eat dinner at 4.30pm and vanish into his private quarters by 5.15; that when he travelled, he often skipped briefings while keeping a morning appointment with a makeup artist to cover his wrinkles and liver spots. You might think that Mr Biden\u2014that anyone\u2014would welcome as a rationale that he had lost a step or two. It is a kinder explanation than the alternatives: vanity, hubris, incompetence.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Accept, for a moment, Joe Biden\u2019s contention that he is as mentally as sharp as ever. Then try&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":115210,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[4829,714,51680,12,391,49,26],"class_list":{"0":"post-115209","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-columns","9":"tag-joe-biden","10":"tag-lexington","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-opinion","13":"tag-united-states","14":"tag-world"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114536338116006817","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115209","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=115209"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115209\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/115210"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=115209"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=115209"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=115209"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}