I’m in the admittedly small and shrinking minority of people who aren’t convinced that President Biden is cognitively impaired. At least not in the way he is commonly described, as someone with dementia, incapable of serving in public office.
I don’t mean to say that he is the better Democratic presidential candidate for the November election; I don’t take public positions on electoral matters. (Well, okay, I hope no one in Michigan’s 12th congressional district votes for Rashida Tlaib. But I don’t generally offer voting advice.)
In any event, the issue of Mr. Biden’s mental acuity is likely moot, since, whatever the reality may be, what counts politically is the perception people have of him. His determination notwithstanding, he may well yet prove unable to survive the onslaught of pleas that he yield to a younger aspirant to the presidency. There are just too many doubts in the public’s mind.
But what raises doubts in my mind about those doubts, and what I think is important to take away from the Biden controversy, is a psychological truism: Just as there are many types of intelligence—some people are math-minded; others, proficient with words and ideas; others, still, unusually talented in mastering languages; yet others, in envisioning spatial manipulations of objects, to name just a few areas—so are there different types of cognitive deficits. And having one, or even several, may not implicate others.
To wit: I have long suffered—and I don’t use the word lightly, since my deficit can be quite embarrassing—from being unable to remember people’s names. It’s not that I don’t recognize or appreciate the people, or even care deeply about them. I just sometimes—more frequently, I think, as I age—draw blanks when trying to remember the proper nouns to which they are attached.
I’m also “directionally challenged.” Getting from point A to point B often takes me on a tour of the entire alphabet. (Though that’s a deficit, blessedly, that my wife and GPS have made less of a problem.)
Those deficiencies have not, however, affected my ability to analyze a text, learn a Tosafos, write an essay or spot a misleading claim (or, our children seem to feel, give useful advice). At least, I don’t think they have; unsolicited feedback from people more accomplished than I am supports my optimistic take.
Oh, yes, I forgot, there’s also my memory problem…
Another deficit that afflicts some people is being unable to express clearly what their minds are entirely cogently thinking. One example is stuttering.
When you think about it, it’s an astounding thing we do every time we speak our minds. Somehow, the muscles in our lips and tongue are able to instantaneously translate thought into sound, turning a davar into a dibbur.
“A man may arrange his thoughts,” says Shlomo Hamelech, “but what he says depends on Hashem” (Mishlei 16:1). And our pre-tefillah mini-tefillah is “Hashem, open my lips…”
Studies associate stuttering with higher-than-average IQs. Stuttering is simply the effect of a glitch in that dark and mysterious pathway from mind to mutter (bad pun, yes, I know).
And there are other kinds of mind-mouth-pipeline glitches, too. Many people experience them on occasion—others, frequently. Mr. Biden (who, as it happens, stuttered as a child) has always been a less-than-stellar extemporaneous speaker. But what has been described as his propensity for “gaffes” may be due to what might be better understood as a speech-processing deficit. His thoughts may have been clear but the wrong words simply emerge at times from his mouth. His perception and judgment, arguably the most important factors in a leader, may be untainted.
Even as I listened to the debate that turned the president from electoral viability to vulnerability, I got the feeling that his mind was working fine and he knew what he wanted to say but simply couldn’t say it.
I might be wrong, of course. But I might be right.
But, again, with regard to the presidential campaign, the point is likely moot. It is, though, one worth recognizing in our everyday lives. Dementias do exist, and are in fact increasingly common, but not every cognitive deficit should lead us to that diagnosis.
Sometimes people think fine but just don’t talk their goodest.
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