Biden’s age is now under scrutiny. His campaign needs to respond with careful candor

President Joe Biden probably hoped that the 388-page report from special counsel would put a lingering question — the one of his handling of classified documents — to bed.

And indeed, while Special Counsel Robert Hur’s report said that Biden “willfully” held onto classified materials at his home in Delaware and the office of a think tank, it also said it would not recommend crimiminal charges for the president.

The good news ended there for the president. It should be noted that Attorney General Merrick Garland nominated Hur, a Republican whom Trump nominated to serve as the US Attorney for Maryland. Garland did so after Trump sought to use the entire department as his personal legal defense arm. It was supposed to be a show of impartiality toward the current president.

But nominating Hur might have given Republicans their most potent weapon yet. It forced a conversation on Biden’s age and whether it makes him fit to be the president for another term into the foreground. The report became the equivalent of a rubber hose beating: it may not be fatal, but it will bruise him up a bit.

Much of Washington noted the passage in the report that noted how Biden could not remember “even within several years” when his son Beau Biden died of brain cancer. Matters became even worse during the press conference afterward when he said that Abdel Fattah El-Sisi was Mexico’s president instead of Egypt’s.

The press have long grumbled that the White House and the Biden re-election campaign has kept the boss cloistered, perhaps to avoid hard questions. That habit, of course, has now only magnified the questions about his mental acuity.

Questions about Biden’s age have loomed in the background ever since he announced his candidacy in 2019.