If you’re looking for another depreciation of Joe Biden’s capacity to fill the duties of his office or prediction that shadowy Democratic power elites will find a way to ease him out, somehow circumventing his dubiously capable next-in-line, this isn’t it. I’m thinking instead of the “Biden Problem” in a generic sense, viz., when a political faction finds itself bound to a leader who harms its cause more than he helps it and can’t easily be superseded.
Joe Biden became the Democratic Presidential nominee, because all of the other aspirants were inexperienced, unlikable, extremist, unknown or all four. Biden appeared to have none of those defects. He had served 36 years in the Senate and eight as Vice President. He was known for his bonhomie. He had a reputation as a moderate, a former quasi-Dixiecrat who had mellowed as the Jim Crow era receded into the past. He was well known to the electorate, at least in the sense that everyone had heard his name, even if very few had much sense of who he was.
The country learned little more about him during the campaign, which he spent largely out of sight. He then defeated, by a narrow margin and with immense help from media and billionaires, an incumbent President who had worked tirelessly to alienate large swathes of voters who agreed for the most part with the policies he espoused but not with his espousing them.
Thus we reached the present predicament, which, let’s remember, is a predicament for Americans of any and all political persuasions, not just for Democrats. Moreover, it’s a predicament that no plausible action within the framework of the Constitution can resolve. (Action outside the Constitution would bring on worse problems.) The President won’t be impeached. So long as he retains a reasonable proportion of his present faculties, the Twenty-Fifth Amendment is an unworkable removal mechanism (more difficult than impeachment, unless the incumbent is literally incapable of speaking up for himself). He shows no signs of wanting to lay aside the burdens of office voluntarily.
Moreover, should the forces of nature remove him, matters wouldn’t be improved much, if at all. His designated successors are Kamala Harris and, after her, Nancy Pelosi, figures who inspire confidence in their own households and very few other places.
Such is the current instantiation of the “Biden Problem”. Let’s note its elements, abstracted from particularities. First is the election of a President for reasons that have little to do with his fitness for the office. Joe Biden was lucky in his opposition; his own qualities didn’t really matter. Second is manifest incapacity for the office. That doesn’t mean that a President who is non compos mentis, just one who isn’t up to the demands of the world’s most demanding position. Third is the absence of visible exit from the situation created by the first two elements.
For most of our history, Biden Problems stemming from age weren’t a great danger. Only five of the 45 Presidents were as old as 65 when they took office (two of them at a time when Presidents had far less to do than today); 32 were under age 60. Joe Biden is a full eight years older than the next oldest, his immediate predecessor Donald Trump.
Only two men entered the Presidency with potentially serious physical impairments: Franklin D. Roosevelt, a polio victim, and John F. Kennedy, dependent on prescription drugs to alleviate a painful chronic disease. In each case, the country avoided a Biden Problem. While FDR and JFK died in office, death was from other causes. So far as one can tell, their debilities had little effect on how they carried out their duties.
Now let’s look ahead. I apologize if that view is discomforting.
According to polls (with all due allowance for their unreliability at this distance from Election Day), Donald Trump is the favorite to win the Republican nomination, assuming that he seeks it, in 2024. A brand new McLaughlin & Associates poll says that 70 percent of Republican voters want him to run, and 81 percent would support him if he did (62 percent “strongly”). Pitted against a laundry list of conceivable GOP opponents, running from Ron DeSantis to Candace Owens and Liz Cheney(!), The Donald is the choice of 53 percent; DeSantis is second at 13.
The same poll puts Trump solidly ahead of Biden in a hypothetical general election, 51 to 40 percent. (He would beat Hillary Clinton by the same margin.)
There is, then, more than a remote prospect that Donald Trump will become the second President to serve nonconsecutive terms. If he does, the possibility (not certainty, to be sure) of a Biden Problem looms.
- Should Trump be elected, two factors are likely to be keys to his success: (i) support from Republicans because of the enemies he has made and (ii) continued Biden bumbling that taints him and, more generally, the Democratic Party. Just as with Biden in 2020, Trump in 2024 will be the beneficiary of his opponent’s negatives rather than his own positives.
- Upon taking the oath for a second term, Donald Trump will be 78 years old. Does that ring a bell? After four years of aggravated ineptitude, he will face daunting challenges at home and abroad, for worse than Joe Biden had to cope with. That doesn’t mean that the office will overwhelm him as it has poor Mr. Biden, but the risk is undeniable. Gambling the nation on the health and acuity of an elderly man of volatile temperament isn’t much different from putting your life savings on red or black at the roulette wheel and letting it spin.
- If the gamble doesn’t pay off, it’s hard to see how America can recover. It won’t be a matter of easing a capable Vice President into office. By then, given the prospects of rampant inflation, unchecked crime and international turmoil, the transition may well be too late.
“First, do no harm.” In this age of euthanasia, physicians may have forgotten that maxim, but it remains wise.
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