President Biden’s response to the Maui wildfires is being panned as uncaring, raising a question beyond the familiar ones about his age and health: If Mr. Biden is losing his talent for glad handing and retail politics, can he mount a successful reelection campaign?

“‘Empathy’ has become the buzzword of 2020,” Forbes reported in August of that year, reflecting the conventional wisdom that Mr. Biden had locked up that strategic resource. A month before Election Day, Gallup found that he led President Trump almost two-to-one in likability and by nine points on “cares about the needs of people like you.”

Mr. Biden’s advantage on the empathy gap reflected the tremendous grief that forged his common man, “Amtrak Joe” persona. His first wife and infant daughter, Neilia and Naomi Biden, died in a 1972 car accident and his son, Beau Biden, died of cancer in 2015.

A national tragedy like the one in Hawaii ought to have been one Mr. Biden handled with aplomb, performing a script he knows well: Mourn the dead, comfort survivors, pledge federal help, and protect his flank so any critics looked petty.

Instead, Mr. Biden refused to answer questions about the devastation for days, responding, “No comment” to inquiries, words angry Maui residents waved on signs as he arrived to tour the ashes. These unforced errors were shocking for a politician whose brand has long been the slap on the back, the hug, and the folksy — if exaggerated — anecdote.

This display lent credence to the idea that Mr. Biden is being scripted by others — the “they” he often says won’t let him do something. By the time he made a legitimate point about not visiting Maui because he’d get in the way, it was too late to make a first impression, but he could still hope to work the old magic in person.

Mr. Biden would hug widows, tousle the hair of children, swab away tears — in a word, show empathy. Instead, he seemed more like a tourist than comforter-in-chief, cooing about the boots on a cadaver dog, seeming oblivious to the fact that they protected the animal from scorching its pads during its grim work of searching for the dead.

At an event while survivors spoke, Mr. Biden was accused of dozing off in a grainy video clip. Although a higher-resolution clip seemed to refute the claim, there was no debunking that the president’s remarks fell flat. He told the story of a 20-minute fire confined to the kitchen at one of his homes, equating it with a raging inferno that incinerated 114 people and left more than 1,000 missing.

Mr. Biden prefaced his remarks with “I don’t want to compare difficulties” and then proceeded to do just that, saying “we have a little sense, Jill and I, what it’s like to lose a home,” describing the “small fire” fifteen years ago after a lightning strike.

Describing the incident, Mr. Biden dropped the glib phrase “long story short” and claimed, “I almost lost my wife, my ‘67 Corvette — and my cat.” The only saving grace was that this version of the tale was closer to the truth than 2021 when he said the “house burned down with my wife in it.”

Mr. Biden may have realized that he’d be fact-checked for sincerity; so, he added that he was “kidding,” as if the memorial was an open-mic night. The cringeworthy performance recalled the moment that started his slide in popularity following the Afghanistan withdrawal.

At a ceremony with the parents of thirteen servicemen and women killed in the suicide bombing at Kabul airport, Mr. Biden checked his watch. Already weathering criticism for bungling the war’s end, the moment came to symbolize a president who had better things to do and cared very little about fellow Americans.

Partisans gave Mr. Biden a pass on Maui and the Afghanistan event, but even they must know that this is not the “Uncle Joe” of the past — and that diehards aren’t the people he’ll have to win in 2024. To renew his lease on the White House, he’ll have to portray the empathy that carried him to victory in 2020 — lightning that now seems less likely to strike twice.