On our nation’s 248th birthday, Joe Biden faces the wrath of a thousand pundits. The whole world watched the elected leader of the world’s oldest republic befogged, slack-jawed, and mentally vacant in a debate he had to win. A recent poll from CBS showed that after Biden’s performance last week, 72 percent of registered voters believed the man lacked the cognitive ability to be president.
Even his closest friends and sycophants are pleading for the old man to hang it up. The New York Times editorial board. Former advisers to Barack Obama. Columnist and Biden’s personal friend, Tom Friedman, said he wept in a hotel room in Portugal while watching the debate. They’ve seen enough. Joe Biden, for the good of your country, step down.
And yet, Biden’s White House is shrugging it off. It was just a debate, they tell us. Don’t let 90 minutes define years of accomplishments.
But it was not just a debate. It was indelible and undeniable proof that the leader of the free world lacks the stamina and acuity to do the job for four more months, let alone four more years.
As Biden weighs his decision, he may well think back to when he was a young man and then-president Lyndon Baines Johnson found himself in a similar position. Johnson was losing the country, and in the middle of the primary he decided to bow out.
Today, Free Press writer Eli Lake hosts a special episode about what happened in 1968 when President Johnson decided he was not fit for reapplying for his job. He listened to his critics and backed away from the White House, allowing the Democrats an opportunity to stage an open convention to choose their next candidate for the presidency. But why did the party want him gone so badly? And how did this seismic decision work out? It’s a tale of murder, war, and riots that culminated in the most explosive convention in the history of America.
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Yeah politicans today don’t have the class of the ones in the 1960’s. Even Nixon, he resigned rather than drag the country through a trial. But thats not 2024, today politicians are out for personal glory.
Thank you for an insightful history lesson and the similarities of the mood of the country (racial tensions, political protests, campus unrest). I suspect that many Americans have been making the same comparison.
The key difference is that 1968 had to do with politics rather than the President’s ability to lead. I wonder how (or if) the latter would factor in. In an age of self-selected media coverage I think our country is even more divided now than in 1968. The WSJ’s Potomac Watch podcast did an excellent analysis of what the next steps could look like for the country. We’re in uncharted territory.