Ever wonder who's really president these days? You're not alone, even if you're more honest about it than the mainstream media. Joe Biden spent the weekend at Rehoboth Beach as Hurricane Helene slammed into several states and killed hundreds of people, rather than spending it at the White House directing the emergency response. It took him days later to finally show up in person, and even then barely managed to do much than gawk.

Axios notes his apparent early retirement in a similar manner. Since the June 27 debate, both Joe and Jill Biden have been mighty hard to spot. Their headline "The Disappearing Bidens" speaks volumes:

Joe Biden's visit to the storm-ravaged states in the South this week was an event that's become increasingly rare for the president: a public appearance.

Why it matters: Biden hasn't scheduled public events in 43 of the 75 days since he dropped his re-election bid, a reflection of the 81-year-old president's unpopularity and age limitations as he approaches his last three months in office.

It's not that we don't know where Biden is. Presidents have public schedules, so we can accurately report that the Bidens arrived at Rehoboth Beach at 2:15 pm ET on Friday afternoon. By that time, Hurricane Helene had hit Florida and had already begun wreaking catastrophic damage in Georgia, on its way to the Carolinas and Tennessee.

Where was Biden? On the beach. He did have one event on his schedule -- a virtual appearance at the "NABTU Tradewomen Build Nations Conference," on Saturday morning at 11 am ET. Otherwise, rather than stick around the White House to be present for emergency-management decisions, the Bidens sat out the weekend at Rehoboth, and didn't return until 9:20 pm ET on Sunday night. 

Not doing public events is one thing. Going AWOL in the middle of a massive, deadly natural disaster is something else entirely. The press absolutely pilloried George Bush for remaining at his Crawford ranch as Katrina approached and attempting to manage it remotely -- and he at least cut the stay short after Katrina made landfall. "It raised fundamental questions in people's minds," US News and World Report wrote ten years later, "about how in touch he was while there was chaos in people's lives."

That's a fair criticism. So why aren't media outlets raising that now? Bush had already been at Crawford for the congressional recess before Katrina had begun to form. Biden hightailed it to Rehoboth after Helene actually made landfall and started causing death and destruction. 

And at least there were no questions about Bush's cognitive competence. Bush got pilloried because he could have done better, not because he was incapable of leading. Axios notes that the White House is still claiming that Biden is "working around the clock," but that's an obvious and outright lie. Biden's incompetence has grown so large that Axios reports the White House had to scrap a visit by the University of Michigan champion football team -- an easy photo op -- because they couldn't work around his constricted "good times" during the day. 

Biden hasn't disappeared. He's checked out. And that raises the question, again: Who's really in charge at the White House? And the next question would be: Why isn't the media demanding an answer to that first question?