Karl Rove, who served as deputy chief of staff during the George W. Bush administration, says many people doubt President Joe Biden can last another term.
His comments came in a column published by The Wall Street Journal on Thursday. Biden had announced his bid for reelection on Tuesday.
Rove called Biden, "a fragile, sometimes befuddled president."
"A three-minute video issued at the crack of dawn Tuesday was a strange way to launch President Biden's re-election bid," he said. "Granted, President Obama announced he would run for a second term by video in April 2011, but no one questioned his energy and mental acuity.
"Not so for Mr. Biden. Many doubt he can last another term. If he's re-elected and serves four years, he would be 86 — older than all but seven former presidents ever lived, including Jimmy Carter, who is 98 and left office at 56."
He said the Biden campaign team should have dealt with the public's concern about Biden's age, by "putting a vigorous, sharp Mr. Biden on display in person. Instead we got a video."
Rove maintained that the video appealed "almost exclusively to the Democrat base, elements of which aren't enthusiastic about a second Biden run. He said the spot featured Democrats' "go-to issues — abortion and voting rights — and familiar attacks, including the charge that Republicans want to gut Social Security to pay for tax cuts for the wealthy. It was all pro forma and blasé."
He noted certain issues were missing from the video, including inflation, recession worries, the war in Ukraine, the China threat, crime, and the southern border.
"Mr. Biden doesn't like talking about these issues, but he won't be able to avoid them during the campaign," Rove said. "Tuesday's video will leave no strong imprint, and news of the president's announcement will be drowned out by the debt-ceiling fight in Congress.
"West Wing politicos may not have a problem with that, thinking that a low-key campaign by video may work in 2024, just as campaigning from that Delaware basement did in 2020, especially if the election is a rematch with Donald Trump."
Jeffrey Rodack ✉
Jeffrey Rodack, who has nearly a half century in news as a senior editor and city editor for national and local publications, has covered politics for Newsmax for nearly seven years.
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