The legendary Jerry Garcia, founder and lead guitarist for the Grateful Dead, had a side project during his tenure with the band, a Bluegrass group he called Old and in the Way, a colorful name that now seems to describe former President Joe Biden during the latter part of his administration.
A new book authored by Jake Tapper of CNN and Alex Thompson of Axios, titled Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, It’s Cover-Up and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again, describes in great detail Biden’s diminished mental capacity while serving in the White House and the effort by his staff to hide that reality from the press and public – a campaign that succeeded for the most part until Biden’s deterioration became obvious during his infamous debate with Republican presidential nominee, President-cum-Dictator Donald J. Trump, on June 27, 2024, eventually leading him to abandon his re-election attempt.
The revelations establish that Biden, who presided over a more successful administration than it receives credit for, was in no shape to serve a second four- year term. Frankly, that should have been obvious from the get-go. He turned 82 in November 2024, the same month as the election, and would have been 86 by the time his second term ended, had he been elected, and survived. He was already much too old, regardless of mental capacity, to serve as president of the United States.
Biden’s decision to seek re-election, his overly protective staff, the disinclination of any Democrat to mount an effective primary challenge and his decision to drop out, to be replaced by Vice President Kamala Harris, ultimately led to a Republican victory, and the public will never know if the return of either Trump or Biden to the world’s most powerful office would have resulted in the bigger disaster.
My money’s on Trump, who is sinking fast and taking democracy with him.
Regardless, Republican functionaries are predictably hopping up and down madly over the book, portraying the tragedy as a huge political conspiracy, with our boy, Rep. Jamie Comer, R-TheFrankfortLoop, who has himself displayed the mental acuity of a gnat during his time on the public stage, told Ed Henry of Newsmax that “The Democrats don’t need to be talking about a threat to democracy, they just need to look in the mirror.”
“Their party is in disarray,” said Comer, chair of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee. “I’m around them every day, unfortunately, here in Washington DC. They’re in disarray, they’re leaderless and they don’t have any type of vision for the future.”
Huckleberry Comer added in an X post, “Joe Biden’s decline wasn’t just visible — it was undeniable. His decline was carefully managed by a complicit liberal media. They even had the audacity to claim Joe Biden was healthier than Donald Trump. The media blew their credibility and Americans aren’t buying their lies.”
Now, there’s plenty of finger pointing warranted. Biden himself, obviously, should have stuck to the concept of a one-term, bridge presidency since he was already too old to run when he won the 2020 election. Someone, family, staffer, should have suggested a re-election campaign was a bad idea.
The Democratic Party carries a large degree of responsibility but it appears party leaders, many of whom were also way above the Social Security eligibility age themselves, were unaware that Uncle Joe had slipped around the bend, otherwise, foreseeing an electoral disaster in the making, someone would have held out a hand and shouted “Whoa!” before it was too late.
As a result, one nation under Trump finds itself in a precarious position. Saddled with a gutless Congress there’s little that can be done about it.
Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, who is thought to be revving up his own Democratic presidential campaign to replace Trump in 2028, was quoted in The Washington Post as saying Democrats and Harris would have benefitted had Biden decided earlier than July 2024 to end his campaign.
“In retrospect, if the president was going to drop out, dropping out earlier would have given any candidate a little more time,” he said.
Beshear also took a slight jab at Harris, who understandably found it difficult to make the nonetheless necessary break from the Biden administration during her unsuccessful campaign, giving that Biden was already starting out in the pits.
“It also would have taken a campaign willing to break with the president on certain issues,” he said.
It’s fair to say that Biden visibly slowed during his four years in the White House, leading to some concerns, but the degree of his infirmities was kept under wraps.
People, including nitwits like Comer, blame the press and it is unfortunate the media proved unable to remove the curtain covering Biden’s incapacities. But he made few public appearances during his tenure, was derided for presiding over few press conferences and was essentially stashed in a bunker to hide the reality.
This wasn’t the first time a president’s mental capabilities were called into question. Woodrow Wilson suffered a serious stroke that affected his mental capacities in October 1919 with more than a year remaining in office. His wife, Edith, has been cited for running the government during his incapacitation, credited by some as the country’s first female president.
Then there’s the subject Republicans always hope to avoid – Ronald Reagan. It was obvious at various times during his administration – like during a worrisome presidential debate with Democrat Walter Mondale inn 1984 – that ol’ Dutch wasn’t as quick on the draw as he once was. He was at the time the oldest person to serve as president, leaving office in 1988 at the age of 78. That status has since been surpassed by Biden and will be by Trump on June 14. Reagan eventually was found to suffer from Alzheimer’s disease, passing on June 5, 2004. In a book published subsequent to his death, his son, Ron Reagan, wrote that his old man “may have shown signs of Alzheimer’s disease as early as three years into his first term” and that there existed a “growing sense of alarm” over the president’s mental condition.
Wilson failed to convince Congress to enter the League of Nations, perhaps because of his incapacity. Nothing disastrous occurred during the final years of either the Reagan or Biden administrations, although Iran-Contra did blow up in the faces of Republicans.
Now, of course Trump, a senior citizen by anyone’s standards, finds his mental astuteness under a microscope. While several folks insist he is undergoing a cognitive decline, there remains no definitive evidence that the president is incapacitated. Following an medical exam last month, it was declared that Trump “remains in excellent health, exhibiting robust cardiac, pulmonary, neurological and general physical function.”
Still, the situation bears watching. Many observers who visited with Biden early in his tenure swear he proved astute but were alarmed by his drop-off toward the end.
Trump has exhibited on occasion a tendency to do or say things that call his perspicacity into question. It’s hard to determine whether Trump is losing it or just being Trump.
Either way, it’s not very delectable. And he still has three more years to tear things asunder, with all his marbles or not.