Presidents: Jill Biden meet Edith Wilson
Presidents in decline
How do leaders remain in power long after their abilities wane and they become a serious liability?
While it shouldn’t be easy to remove an elected leader, incumbency and terms of office make it difficult to oust someone even when the disability is severe.
President Woodrow Wilson was incapacitated after his stroke but his wife, Edith Galt Wilson, and senior aides shielded him from scrutiny and carried on their charade of normalcy. Mrs. Wilson stared down congressional leaders while the president lay immobilized. She gives rise to the semi-humorous comment that we have already had a woman as president.
Early on, aging (and not so aging) presidents would pass on from common ailments, bad habits and lack of exercise. William Henry Harrison, a youthful 68, died after only 30 days in office of pneumonia, poor (but standard) medical care and the many woes of the presidency. And Warren Harding, barely out of diapers at 57, died of a heart attack complicated by pneumonia (and a lifetime of whiskey and cigars.)
Franklin Roosevelt likely worked himself to death after 11 years in the Oval office. Vice-president Harry Truman was shocked at Roosevelt’s condition when he lunched with him in 1944. FDR’s death at 62 from a stroke relieved the country of the burden of dealing with an aging president in sharp decline.
Modern medicine and science now keeps us alive much longer and the physical body can remain sturdy while the mind begins to wither.
Recent revelations concerning President Biden (and not just the debate performance) make it clear that he is faltering. It’s also clear that his staff and family have been cleverly managing him to prevent the public from seeing the full affects of his aging. (See above, we’ve been here before.)
Were he to remain in the race and win, Jill Biden would surely be the next Edith Galt Wilson, running the country from her husband’s bedside.
Based on the available facts, Joe Biden in the Oval Office in twenty-four, or even twelve months, is not a pretty prospect.
To not take note of the obvious decline and project it into the future is a failure of basic common sense. It also calls to mind the consistent charge levied against supporters of Donald Trump — that blind fealty, given the plain facts, amounts to cult worship.
