There is nothing more symbolic of American political power than a president of the United States holding court in the Oval Office.

Ensconced in that intimidating room, countless leaders have browbeaten, charmed, and cracked wise with the powerful and the press for generations.

But not Joe Biden.

And now we know why. According to new reporting, the reason we don’t see Joe in the Oval very often is that his team can’t install a teleprompter to keep the gaffer-in-chief on script.

So yeah, that’s where we are regarding the leader of the free world.

If one really stops and thinks about this it is simply shocking. The primary job of any politician, but especially a president, is to communicate a vision of policy and competency to the American people and the people of the world.

We have a president today who is incapable of this most basic element of his job. And whatever unelected group of White House flunkies there are — who are actually the president — can’t trust him to even open his mouth unless he can stare at a teleprompter and mouth their insights like the weatherman.

Things have gotten so obvious and awkward of late that even when Biden does have his trusty large print screen scrolling his supposed ideas he can’t even push them out. His struggle with the word “kleptocracy” in recent remarks was just sad. And fine, he grew up with a stutter, but he’s been in the public spotlight since “The Godfather” was in movie theaters.

The darkest and most troubling possibility here, but one we must face, is that we functionally have no actual President of the United States. If he can’t appear in public, in his own office, for want of a digital cheat sheet, then of course he has little if anything to do with the actual running of the country. And he’s not even a good false figurehead — using the teleprompter he often looks and sounds like he’s reading the bottom line of the eye exam.

Let’s face it. Even for an administration that thinks it’s a TV show, the construction of a White House set where Biden can wax incoherently was bizarre. But now we know this sound studio was set up to protect Biden, as much as possible, from his own words and actions. Maybe soon the president will only do live events in virtual reality where his handlers can correct his errors in deep fake real-time. Why not have the president be a programmed hologram? Is that so different from the current reality?

It’s time to talk about grandpa. He probably shouldn’t be driving or using the gas oven on his own anymore, or, you know, running the most powerful country on the planet into the ground.

Maybe the White House will overcome the great technical challenges of getting a screen with words on it into the Oval Office and we can once again see a president in his actual, natural environment. But given that this administration has given no indication in 20 months that it can even tie its shoes, I suggest we don’t hold our breath.

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain, the wonderful Wizard of Ahs and Ums. Just go along with the joke as the Democrats would have us do. But the joke isn’t funny anymore. A president who cannot even give brief remarks in the Oval Office is no president. And that, my friends, is that sad fact.

So what are we going to do about it?

David Marcus is a Brooklyn-based columnist and author of “Charade: The Covid Lies That Crushed a Nation.”