On Wednesday, former Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy revealed something that those who have been paying attention have known for some time: Joe Biden has lost whatever self-possession he ever had. Now, the president can't even manage a behind-closed-doors meeting with members of Congress without his notecards, which are prepared by... who? FoxBusiness's Jeffrey Clark (no relation) has the details.

Former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy revealed for the first time on Wednesday that President Biden uses notecards in private meetings with small groups of people. 

"He still has a teleprompter when you meet behind closed doors," McCarthy told "The Bottom Line" co-hosts on FOX Business. "But the teleprompter are cards. I found when I met with him, it would just be a couple of them. He would read from the card."

McCarthy said that it was difficult to "deviate" from Biden during private negotiations, referencing when he spoke with the president on the debt ceiling. 

"He just sticks to the cards," he said of Biden. "And if you go, if you deviate from the cards, he can't continue onward there."

To call this a travesty is a gross understatement. 

This man is supposed to be the President of the United States, the leader of the free world, arguably one of the top two or three most powerful men on the planet — and he is reduced to reading notecards prepared by persons unknown, while doctors vetted by the Democratic Party laughably proclaim him "fit for duty."

See Related: President Biden Declared Fit for Office After Visiting Walter Reed Hospital 

What's the State of Joe Biden for His State of the Union?

This isn't a new issue.

Biden is prone to consulting notecards after calling on pre-selected donors who have questions at the closed-door events, Axios reported on Feb. 23.

"Biden's reliance on notecards to help explain his own policy positions — on questions he knows are coming — is raising concerns among some donors about Biden's age," the article stated.

Biden's age isn't really the issue; my own father, at 81, was cutting, splitting, and stacking five cords of firewood every year, maintaining a rural home on 60 acres of hardwood timber, and reading books on particle physics and cosmology, along with the odd work by Aristotle and Marcus Aurelius thrown in. No, President Biden's age, in and of itself, isn't the issue; it is his mental and physical deterioration, more and more obvious day by day, that is the issue.

The general election is, for all intents and purposes, already underway. President Biden, unless the ever-more-desperate Democrats find a way to ease him (and his execrable vice president) out the side door, will be facing Donald Trump, who is looking increasingly likely to be on the road to Grover Cleveland himself into a second term. The norm for presidential elections is three debates between the final candidates, along with one VP debate. Setting aside the VP debate for a moment — much as I love the idea of Kamala Harris squaring away with, say, Tim Scott, Kristi Noem, or Vivek Ramaswamy — how will the Biden campaign manage that expectation? Refuse to debate? Imagine what a huge club that gives Donald Trump to wield. Accept the debate and send the president out with his pockets full of note cards? That won't fly and is likely against the rules. What is clear is that befuddled old Joe is in no shape to debate Donald Trump — or anyone else.

Things already are not looking good for the Biden campaign. This is just another data point that leads us to the impossible-to-avoid conclusion: Joe Biden is not, and has not been for some time, fit to serve as President of the United States.