The belated withdrawal of Joe Biden from last year’s presidential election has now been shown to be even more correct (the withdrawal, not the belatedness).
While everyone wishes Biden the best in combating aggressive metastasized prostate cancer that has spread to his bones, it is better for Biden and the country that he is doing so as a private citizen and not commander in chief. Of course, it wasn’t just physical issues that forced Biden from the race last summer, it was his thinking ability and his disastrous debate outing.
There’s more evidence of his mental decline in today’s publication of a book detailing his aides’ and confidants’ efforts to hide the effects of age in the now octogenarian and even more evidence in the release of the audio of his halting performance with former Special Counsel Robert Hur.
In the context of an inner circle that strived to shield Biden’s health from public scrutiny, we hope it wasn’t connected to the prostate cancer not being detected earlier. We wish him effective treatment and full recovery.
There has always been an issue of when a leader is reaching the natural end of his or her tether and ability to keep up with the demands of the job.
As for Biden, his noticeable slowing down should have been the reason for him to decline a second run and step aside earlier, instead of putting on efforts to mask his growing difficulties.
It was only the June 28 debate against Donald Trump that exposed the truth and forced him to quit. In retrospect Biden should have done a James K. Polk, who didn’t seek a second term. Biden himself at one point understood this to be his role — a bridge leader that could put the country back on the right path after Trump’s first term and COVID
If Biden had called it a career after the 2022 midterms, the Democratic Party could have an open primary for a nominee. But Biden decided he wanted to stay and his growing limitations only came into full view after it would have been possible to have a competitive primary. It’s impossible to be certain about alternative timelines, but we can say that a robust contest between qualified candidates earlier in the electoral season could have set Kamala Harris or another Dem up for a stronger showing.
Of course, we can hardly talk about the issue of presidential health without mentioning the White House’s current occupant, who has never throughout his first term as president nor the months of his second released a comprehensive health evaluation, preferring comically hyperbolic assessments that, according to his former doctor, he dictated himself.
We can all be pretty sure that Trump was not “the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency,” as one of his fake medical letters stated, but we would love to know the state of his actual mental and physical health and acuity, beyond the basic cognitive test that he’s so often brags about passing.
With Trump, it’s hard to parse the results of aging versus his own personal brand of kooky off-the-cuff spouting, which hasn’t made sense for a long time. It’s time for the nearly-80-year-old who holds so much power to demonstrate he’s in the right state to wield it.
