Calling someone "stupid son of a b****" is a bit rich isn't it President Biden?

After calling a Fox News reporter a "stupid son of a b****" at the end of a press conference this week, Donald Forbes writes that he should take a look at his press conference performances first before having a go at anyone's else contributions.

In the make-believe cocoon where Joe Biden lives, no president has had a better first year. He says so himself.

Every time he performs on the public stage, where he has difficulty uttering a coherent sentence, the question posed by his first year must be whether the three years he has left are sustainable as the country confronts extraordinary domestic and international challenges.

The US presidency is adrift and there's nothing Biden's administration can do short of confining him again to his basement, which is not a leadership option.

His press conference marking the first anniversary of his inauguration was a disaster. Americans saw a rambling old man, hesitant, lost for words and changing tack in mid-reply to questions in order to refer to some tangential memory from his distant past or an unrelated analogy. Democrats loved to ridicule the sometimes strangled elocution of the two Bush presidents, but Biden consistently hits unmatched lows.

Worse, he made foreign policy – in the eastern European tinderbox no less – off the cuff during his press conference. He suggested Vladimir Putin could invade Ukraine a little bit without incurring much Western pushback. In the first place, every country's national sovereignty is inviolable unless the UN agrees that it is not. In the second place, how much is a little bit? Could Russia take 10 square miles? Fifty? All of eastern Ukraine?

Every word a president utters is a form of commitment that needs to be able to withstand the parsing of the media and the credulity of his listeners, whether they are other governments or ordinary people watching CNN. What they hear from Biden rarely makes sense.

Meanwhile, Vice-President Kamala Harris confirms in every media interview that she has been a monumental casting error as the constitutional president-in-waiting. She could be a player in the comfort of the 100-seat Senate but she is manifestly not a leader which any president must be whether he is at the head of the United States or one of the minnows that make up the numbers at the UN.

In terms of competence, Biden is probably the world's worst head of state right now with Harris pressing on his heels. The mostly liberal media are peeling away from the Biden White House, sometimes reluctantly but aware that their own credibility is at stake.

Not all of them, however. Yamiche Alcindor of NBC tweeted after Biden's press conference: "[President] Biden, in the longest news conference in presidential history, made news, pushed back on critics, called out lies, took responsibility for mistakes he believes he made, expressed surprise at GOP, talked foreign policy and didn't lash out on reporters. Quite the change."

She added: "There is so much to say about [President] Biden's presser. The thing that sticks with me is that he took responsibility for mistakes he believes he made, expressed genuine frustration with COVID & his agenda being stalled by GOP and Democrats & took hard questions without insulting folks."

Say, what? The mystery is why any reporter, knowing the public watched the same press conference and heard Biden's gaffes, still pretends that no one else could see what they saw and make up their own minds. The days of the partisan media guiding public opinion are long obsolete as social media platforms prove in real time.

Every day, White House press secretary Jan Psaki strives to convince everyone that the words Biden says are not what he meant, but it's a losing battle the longer he stumbles. No approval rating has him anywhere near 50 per cent and one put him at 33 per cent.

What Biden said about Ukraine got instant attention from all the interested parties because it tossed a grenade into an issue which involves the survival of NATO as well as America's standing with its numerous and powerful foes. He sounded like a man blurting out a loose option tossed around the table with his national security advisors, a glimpse behind the curtain that no one outside the room was ever intended to hear about.

Constitutionally, there is no obvious solution to the problem of the rest of Biden's presidency, urgent though it obviously is. He could be removed under the 25th amendment if the cabinet agreed that his senility means he is no longer fit to do the job. But replacing him with Harris would be no fix.

There is no legal provision for a special presidential election. The succession when a president and vice president becoming incapacitated follows a line that begins with the speaker of the House, currently Nancy Pelosi who is 82 and probably soon to retire.

Since there's no obvious escape from Biden or Harris, he will probably have to sit his term out. It says a lot about the cynicism of the Democratic party they took such a risk with either.