President Joe Biden held an hour-long press conference Thursday night and answered a range of questions about his age, his competence, his stamina, his health and his future. He also delivered several incisive disquisitions on foreign policy that Donald Trump's staff would have to use a very large coloring book and possibly a puppet show to explain to him. Not that it would work. He'd probably storm out of the meeting long before they got to the part about China and Russia, yelling about love letters and being a boss.


The media didn't seem all that impressed, judging the president's performance to only be fair to middling and virtually ignoring the substance of what he had to say. Biden offered a serious overview of the nation's relationship with its allies and adversaries and made some news about Israel, calling for its war in Gaza to end. But everyone was more interested in Biden's aesthetic performance and how he answered questions about prospective plans to quit the presidential race so any talk of his actual policies is evidently irrelevant.

Biden's criticized a lot for failing to effectively communicate his administration's accomplishments, and there's something in that. He's not good at it the way someone like Bill Clinton was, with his ability to rattle off facts and figures while simultaneously explaining how it's good for average Americans. It's a special skill. (Donald Trump touts his economic record but it's all lies, which isn't the same thing. Just saying "we had the greatest economy the world has ever known" takes no skill — just chutzpah.)

At the press conference, however, Biden did make some comments about his economic accomplishments — although nobody seemed to care:

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