This is an opinion column.

Sen. Katie Britt wants to know whether the president is fit to lead.

Just not this president. Rather, she’s still worried about the last one.

This week, the Senate Judiciary Committee held its first hearing looking into the cover-up of President Joe Biden’s cognitive decline while in office. There, and on TV afterward, Britt had a lot to say about ensuring our top officials stay in tip-top shape.

“What they allowed to happen, that they are not interested in correcting it for the future, is absolutely mindblowing,” Britt said of her Democratic colleagues.

While Democrats have fussed that this is all for show, it’s not a bad thing to investigate. It’s clear now that Biden’s age made it difficult for him to do his job as president, and those around him did what they could to hide that from the American people — at least until they couldn’t anymore. That is, until Biden spaced out on live TV during a presidential debate.

Whether the president is fit to lead, especially in a gerontocracy, is something all Americans should take seriously.

It’s just difficult to take Britt seriously.

You see, consistency matters. And consistency is missing.

The same day Britt was huffing and puffing about senior White House staffers and legacy media covering up Biden’s blunders, the junior senator from Alabama endorsed the senior senator from Alabama in next year’s gubernatorial election.

Tommy Tuberville, who’s 70, has a decade or so to go before he catches up with Joe Biden or Donald Trump. But he has, at times … how shall I put it … shown some signs.

For instance, there was that time he couldn’t recall the three branches of the federal government after having been elected to one of them.

Perhaps he couldn’t recall what he never learned in the first place.

Then, there was that time, while testifying under oath, he couldn’t remember saying he’d leave Ole Miss in a pine box, but then did remember later when talking about it on talk radio …

Maybe it came back to him.

And there was the time he got confused on TV about whether white nationalists were racists.

Maybe white nationalist was a new term for him.

There was the time, when asked by reporters whether police had been attacked on Jan. 6, Tuberville said he didn’t know, even though he had been in the Capitol when this happened, and had every chance to see video of those events on TV in the four years since.

“I didn’t believe it because I didn’t see it,” Tuberville said when asked earlier this year about the attack on the Capitol. “Now, if I see it, I would believe it, but I didn’t see any of that video.”

I suppose it’s possible, if not probable, that Tuberville remembers these things and he’s just lying. But if Tuberville wants to take control as Alabama’s CEO, perhaps now is the time to figure out which it is.

Whether he’s dumb, dishonest or disassociating — these all seem to be secondary concerns to Britt. He’s the frontrunner and GOP nominee apparent, and that’s what matters — backing a winner.

It’s a fair argument that being governor of Alabama is not as demanding as sitting in the Oval Office, and to that, I say, thank God.

Alabama’s current governor has, at times, disappeared from the office for stretches without explanation, misled the public about her health until she couldn’t hide having cancer anymore, and collapsed from fatigue at least one public event.

Britt hasn’t had anything to say about any of that, either. The hazards of old age seem to matter only when she wants them to.

Not unlike truth.

This week, the Senate Judiciary committee called as its expert witness Sean Spicer, a man who once stood in front of the White House press and claimed Trump’s 2017 inaugural crowd had been bigger than President Obama’s, when photographs of each showed that wasn’t true.

Britt didn’t get any answers about that, because, well that wasn’t the point, was it?

Today we have a president, who again claimed this week to have won the 2020 presidential election in a landslide, alleging fraud and threatening prosecutions of those who stick by the truth.

And then there’s still the whole Jan. 6 thing, when the man in the White House today — not the last guy — piddled and fiddled as his most zealous followers ransacked the Capitol.

What Britt and her colleagues are still allowing to happen — that they are not interested in correcting it for the future — is absolutely mindblowing, indeed.

Britt wants to lecture Democrats about how the truth matters, and it absolutely does. But it matters all the time, not just when Britt wants it to.

Not just when it’s easy, but when it is hard.

Kyle Whitmire is the Washington watchdog columnist for AL.com and winner of the 2023 Pulitzer Prize. You can follow him on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, X, Threads and Bluesky.