The what-did-they-know-and-when-did-they-know-it media frenzy was just getting started, with Democratic officeholders being pressed by last week’s Sunday morning talk show hosts whether they “got it wrong” on Joe Biden’s fitness, did they “see much” infirmity, and do they “bear some responsibility” for his initial decision to run for re-election.
Then we learned later on Sunday that Biden has an aggressive form of prostate cancer, and a fresh wave of conspiracy theorizing has begun. After Biden’s office issued a statement, Donald Trump Jr. baselessly suggested the Biden administration covered up his cancer ailment. And on Monday, Ezekiel Emanuel—a physician and longtime Democratic health policy adviser—strangely fed the fever swamps by asserting “he’s had this for many years, maybe even a decade,” though noting doctors don’t always recommend people over 70 take the “prostate specific antigen” test.
But maybe, just maybe, Biden’s latest diagnosis could prompt a bit of grace and perspective.
Presidential medical history is important, and it is important to get it right. Last July, after Biden’s disastrous debate performance, which certainly raised questions about his age but did not prove dementia, I turned to Woodrow Wilson’s checkered medical history to argue the 28th president should have resigned and that the 46th shouldn’t repeat the mistake.
Wilson’s intensifying rigidity and decreasing political sophistication contributed to the Senate’s rejection of the Treaty of Versailles and America’s participation in the League of Nations. I wrote:
[Leader of the Senate Republicans, Henry Cabot Lodge] had proposed incorporating ‘reservations’ that would limit America’s commitments. He was not interested in compromise with his bitter enemy Wilson; he told a reporter, “I mean to kill Article X or kill the treaty.” However, other senators were in the “mild reservationist” camp and were trying to find a middle ground. Secretary of State [Robert] Lansing urged Wilson to deal, but the president refused, worrying about a slippery slope. [Historian John Milton] Cooper concluded, “This was another significant missed opportunity; and the likeliest explanation lay once again in the effects of fatigue and nervous strain.”
Another Wilson biographer, A. Scott Berg, drew a sharper conclusion: “Wilson was, in fact, experiencing a mental decline, which was discernible to others. On several occasions in late July and early August, he responded to queries about the Treaty with incorrect information—instances of recent actions and events that he could not recall. His once photographic memory began to blur.”
Wilson could not fathom [Vice President Thomas] Marshall getting the League of Nations over the finish line. Perhaps that’s understandable because they had no working relationship. But Wilson had a diminished capacity to be flexible. [Medical historian] Dr. [Bert] Park wrote, “Chronic elevations of blood pressure arguably accounted in part for much of [Wilson’s] intransigence and character transformation that occurred from 1918 onward.” Marshall would not have had that problem.
Having said that, we don’t have any hard evidence that Biden was ever incapacitated and unable to perform his duties, which was the case for Wilson after a major stroke. All the recent reporting about how aides limited Biden’s schedule and selectively shielded Biden from the public and lower-level staff suggests there was concern about the optics of an aging president who was forgetful, tended to ramble, and walked stiffly. That doesn’t mean Biden has or had dementia, let alone that his aides or other Democrats knew he had dementia.
Discerning a gradual onset of dementia is extremely difficult because “senior moments” could be a sign of such a serious condition or could not. Regarding Wilson’s missed diagnoses of early-stage dementia, Park said, “certain behavioral changes may only be recognized in retrospect as nascent manifestations of the disease that later becomes obvious in time.”
So, I have no qualms about reporters and historians digging into Biden’s presidency, collecting first-hand accounts from aides and visitors, and consulting with doctors to piece together what exactly happened with Biden physically and mentally over his single term. History demands it.
But, despite recent suggestions that potential Democratic presidential candidates heap scorn on Biden’s closest allies for failing to force Biden out of the 2024 race, or to pressure those allies to perform self-flagellation as the cost of winning back the public trust. We have zero evidence of a scandal, only people caught in an awkward situation. While it’s a situation that had grave consequences, no public trust has been broken by anyone aspiring to be president.
That includes 2028 potential candidates from the Biden administration: Vice President Kamala Harris and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. I have not had an opportunity to read Original Sin by Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson, out today, about Biden’s aging. But I assume that if they had bombshells about Harris or Buttigieg concealing bona fide dementia, we would have seen some screaming headlines by now.
The task for budding presidential aspirants is to show how they would lead a post-Trump America. Our economy is teetering, our institutions are being gutted, and our Constitution is being ignored. Democrats have plenty to debate regarding what they would do to clean up the Trump mess and shape an agenda that addresses not just longstanding challenges but also the slew of new problems being created daily.
If you want to talk about broken trust, look at the brazen corruption flaunted by Trump and his family, the misinformation about public health seeping from Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s Department of Health and Human Services, or the cat-and-mouse games played by Pamela Bondi’s Justice Department to avoid accepting judicial orders. Democrats have their hands full keeping track of all the Trump administration’s transgressions. Supporting Biden’s re-election in the spring of 2024 does not strip anyone of the requisite credibility needed to address potential lawbreaking and ethics violations by the current president and his cronies.
The end of Biden’s epic political career is sad, tragic, and irrelevant to the 2028 election.
