David Weir
Overlooked during the non-stop coverage of the Harris-Trump race, Joe Biden gave an impressive speech the other day at the LBJ Library in Austin, Texas. His delivery was flawless, without any embarrassing slips or gaffes.
When he was nearing the end of his prepared remarks, he paused the teleprompter and went off-script for an extended remembrance of his early political career, clearly in a nostalgic mood. Although he was improvising, he didn’t lose his train of thought or become confused.
Watching this, I was struck by the sharp contrast between this speech and his disastrous debate performance six weeks earlier. What might account for the difference?
Five years ago, I was diagnosed with “Parkinsonism.” A number of medical experts explained to me that it was not Parkinson’s Disease, but a diagnosis based on the shaking in my left arm.
The treatment for this tremor, a medication with the pleasingly poetic name of Carbidopa Levodopa, usually seems to keep the shaking to a minimum.
But recently I’ve been paying much closer attention to when the tremor appears and when it seems to be at its worst, and by doing so I’ve noticed another pattern. Whether or not I’ve taken my pills recently, if I am feeling at all anxious, the tremor gets worse.
During my first 75 years I never thought much about anxiety and certainly didn’t think it was one of the issues that might be affecting my health. Other people, perhaps, but not me. I’d held numerous high-stress jobs and given speeches all over the world, including before Congress and the UN, and I prided myself for staying calm in those moments.
But earlier this spring, my healthcare providers suggested that anxiety might be a contributing factor to my current health problems including an increase in the shaking. They added that anxiety’s effects often worsen with age.
Based on my experience, I’ve come up with my own theory to explain the disparity between Biden’s awful debate performance and his relaxed performance at the LBJ Library, and that is the differing amounts of anxiety he was under on the two occasions.
If my understanding from my caregivers is correct that the effects of anxiety grow worse as part of the aging process, something that used to be routine for Biden, like a debate, could suddenly become extremely daunting.
It’s just a theory, but maybe in the extreme anxiety of the moment of the debate, Biden’s 81-year-old body did him in. We will never know, I suppose, but such are the musings of one older man watching another struggle on what was obviously a very bad night.
David Weir is a journalist who has worked and published at Rolling Stone, Salon, Wired.com, The New York Times, The Nation, Mother Jones, New York, New Times, SunDance, and many other publications and sites. He is a co-founder of the Center for Investigative Reporting and the author of four books.
Photo above: President Joseph R. Biden greets civil rights leader Andrew Young at the L.B.J. Library this week.