President Joe Biden endured one of his worst news cycles in recent memory last week, as special counsel Robert Hur announced he was declining to prosecute the president for mishandling classified documents. This was good news for Biden, in and of itself, but Hur's report on the matter portrayed Biden—perhaps unintentionally—as elderly, forgetful, and enfeebled. From a prosecutor's perspective, these qualities would make him a sympathetic defendant; from a voter's perspective, however, they obviously make him a less-than-ideal candidate for reelection.
The Hur report described the president as an "elderly man with a poor memory." During interviews with Hur, Biden was unable to state when his vice presidency began and ended; he also "did not remember, even within several years, when his son Beau died."
