The Wall Street Journal editorial board doesn’t think that Joe Biden should run for a second term. That’s no surprise given the Journal’s political leanings. As Biden prepares to announce the worst-kept secret in Washington — that he’s running for a second term — it should bring into focus for those in both parties Biden’s severe limitations and handicaps.
“No doubt it’s hard to walk away from the Oval Office after working for five decades to get there. Flying Marine One home for the weekends beats Amtrak,” the Journal board writes. Indeed, it does. And yes, Joe Biden was running for president the year I graduated from college — 1976. That was a wide-open race until a peanut farmer from Georgia figured out that the Iowa caucuses were just as important as any primary. Biden was one of a handful of members of Congress mentioned as a possible candidate in 1976. Instead, the young senator became the first politician outside the state of Georgia to endorse Jimmy Carter.
Related: REPORT: Biden to Announce Reelection Campaign Next Week
“Different people age at different rates, but the risk of an accelerated decline for Mr. Biden is considerable. The chance that he could serve a full second term is hardly assured,” the WSJ editorial board wrote. And that would mean that the country would have to entertain the idea of Ms. Potatoe Head — Kamala Harris — as likely to be forced to serve out the remainder of Biden’s term.
But asking the country to elect a man who is 80 years old and whose second term would end when he is 86 is a risky act that borders on selfish. It’s impossible to know Mr. Biden’s real physical and mental state because the White House goes to great lengths to hide it. But his decline is clear to anyone who isn’t willfully blind. He rarely holds a press conference, and his words are as scripted as possible to avoid embarrassing stumbles that he nonetheless continues to make.
One factor rarely mentioned is that Biden is never going to improve. Age is not a disease you recover from. He’s only going to get worse. What condition will Joe Biden be in by the time the 2024 election rolls around in 19 months? Democrats warning of the “end of democracy” if Trump is elected aren’t acting as if it’s a crisis if Biden runs. Biden could be in such bad shape by the summer of 2024 that his weaknesses are painfully obvious.
Many Democrats think Mr. Biden is the only man for the job because otherwise they would be stuck with Ms. Harris, a demonstrably bad candidate who has shown little capacity as Veep. But if Mr. Biden bowed out now, Democratic Governors and others would have ample time to organize a campaign and compete for the nomination. The way to get stuck with Ms. Harris is if Mr. Biden clears the field but then has a health setback that forces him to withdraw after the primaries are mostly done.
Only a blind partisan hack thinks Kamala Harris is qualified to be president. And for that reason alone, Mr. Biden should step aside and give a younger Democrat a chance to get organized enough to win the nomination.
But the best reason not to run is for the patriotic good of the country. The world is growing more dangerous by the week, and the U.S. faces more formidable adversaries than any time since the height of the Cold War. It will take more than a figurehead President to confront and counter them. In 2008 Hillary Clinton ran an ad saying that she was prepared to take a 3 a.m. phone call in a crisis. Could an 84-year-old Joe Biden take a 3 p.m. call?
The man who opposed forced busing, who was once pro-life, and who was one of the most business-friendly senators in Washington has been captured by the radical left. He is trapped between his own 1970s-style Democratic populism and his 21st-century quasi-Marxist supporters who determine who runs as the Democratic nominee for president.
Even if Biden has been dragged kicking and screaming to embrace radical left policies, the issue for Democrats is whether he can live long enough to enact anyone’s agenda.
Democrats have a history of hiding the serious declines of their presidents. Woodrow Wilson’s stroke had so incapacitated him that his wife was making executive decisions. The country didn’t know. Franklin Roosevelt knew he was dying before he even ran for his fourth term in 1944. The country didn’t know. John Kennedy was suffering from an extremely serious illness — Addison’s Disease — that threatened his life on several occasions. The country didn’t know.
Now we’re observing a president clearly in mental and physical decline and once again, the American people are left to speculate on their own as to the severity of the chief executive’s condition. If the truth of Biden’s condition would damage him politically, better his own personal political position than the United States of America.
That’s a patriotic decision that Biden could make and be remembered for.
