Taxi, a sitcom about a NYC cab company that introduced Danny DeVito as Louie De Palma to an unsuspecting world, is a legendary television show. In one particular episode, broadcast too many years ago to recall, the Rev. Jim Ignatowski, an addled Sunshine Cab Company employee, got lucky at Aqueduct one afternoon and used his new-found fortune to purchase a pet – the long-shot thoroughbred responsible for his winnings, who he renamed Gary.
Chaos, as you might imagine, ensued. Sadly, Gary passed away before the climax, leading the Reverand Jim to deliver a eulogy:
“I don’t know what faith Gary was raised in. But I know he was bred and raised to run. When he was young, he was fast. And I bet it felt good. He put everything he had into going as fast as he was able. But as he got older something began to happen. He was running just as hard but all the other horses were passing him by. I don’t know how much animals understand but Gary must have wondered what the hell was happening to him. Right up to the last he could see he thought that maybe if he could get out there on a fast track on a warm day it would all come back to him because in his heart he was still a two-year-old. I think when your legs give out it’s nice to have people around who understand what’s in your heart.”
Which brings us to President Biden, whose legs, apparently gave out on, or more likely before, Sunday when he opted to end his re-election campaign, releasing his delegates and throwing his support for the nomination behind Vice President Kamala Harris.
It was a necessary decision, not so much because of current circumstances but because of what lies in wait. Biden is 81, would have been 82 by the time he was sworn in for a second term and 86 by the time that term ended. By anyone’s standard, in a country where the life expectancy of a White male is around 73, the president was obviously too old to continue leading the country.
Voters expressed discomfort with the age factor from the outset of the campaign and understandably balked, especially after Biden appeared frighteningly frail, even incapacitated, during a debate with his Republican foe, former President Donald J. Trump, resulting in numerous calls for him to step aside.
The polls didn’t display any dramatic decline in Biden’s re-elect numbers, but influential Democrats who possessed data culled from internal Democratic Party intelligence, people like former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), and Senate Democratic Leader Charles Schumer, of New York, soon showed concern over Biden continuing as the standard bearer and what impact it might have on down ballot races.
One of those who joined the growing chorus to end his campaign was Rep. Morgan McGarvey (D-Louisville), who began his statement extolling the president’s accomplishments but ended up saying there is “no joy in the recognition he should not be our nominee in November.”
“The stakes of this election are too high and we can’t risk the focus of the campaign being anything other than Donald Trump, his MAGA extremists, and the mega-wealthy dark money donors who are prepared to destroy our path toward a more perfect union with Trump’s Project 2025,” McGarvey said. “We can’t allow them to succeed.”
The United States ventured down this path before, although few care to talk about it, and it shows why voters were right to be cautious. President Ronald Reagan was 73 when he sought re-election in 1984 and exhibited signs of slowing down, appearing befuddled during a debate with the Democratic nominee, former Vice President Walter Mondale. He managed to survive that shipwreck and became the oldest man to hold the office until Biden’s arrival.
Reagan’s son, Ron, wrote in a book authored a few years back that he felt “something was amiss” with his father’s acuity during those second four years. Reporters, according to Benjamin Hart in an article for New York magazine, “have testified to a complicated reality: a slowly diminishing executive who leaned increasingly heavily on advisers, disengaged from day-to-day affairs, and sometimes had difficulty distinguishing fantasy from reality.”
In 1994, five years after leaving office, Reagan revealed he was suffering from Alzheimer’s Disease. He died in 2004.
That isn’t a situation that bears repeating.
It’s also clear that by the beginning of his fourth term in office President Franklin D. Roosevelt was spent. He mangled the Yalta Conference in February 1945 and was dead within two months. And, lest we forget, Woodrow Wilson suffered a stroke in 1919 and never fully recovered. At that time his wife, Edith, stepped in and essentially ran the country.
Even before questions about his mental well-being were raised, voters weren’t exactly embracing Biden, even though his opponent, Trump, has a history — rape, 34 felony count convictions, spectacular lies, instigating an insurrection — that would kill a horse.
Biden carried an approval rating over 50 percent for the first couple months of his term but it declined precipitously as a result of the military withdrawal from Afghanistan in late February 2020 – a chaotic exit that was universally panned. It was always going to be messy but it turned out messier than necessary. By Oct. 19, 2021 his approval, according to the CNN poll of polls, was down to 46 percent. That proved to be the high-water mark. By August 2022 it was down to about 36 percent and it currently rests at 37 percent.
The long-term disapproval, coupled with evidence of acuity decline, eventually rendered his continued candidacy untenable. The peculiar thing, however, is that history will likely treat Biden well. He successfully brought the nation out of a pandemic, unemployment is at historic lows, and the U.S. never entered into the anticipated recession. He presided over historic investments in manufacturing and infrastructure and took steps addressing global climate change. He restored faith in America on the international stage, bolstered NATO, and quickly reacted to assist Ukraine after the Russian invasion.
The U.S. for a period suffered under heavy inflation under his tutelage, contributing perhaps to the disapproval numbers, but that problem has subsided significantly and salary growth certainly ameliorated the impact. He should rank right up there with James K. Polk – who achieved all of his campaign promises – as the nation’s best one-term president.
The age and agility question never hurt Reagan, who left office on a high note. For whatever reason Biden never experienced that same sort of success.
Now, of course, some congressional Republicans, given the debate debacle and his sudden withdrawal, are questioning Biden’s ability to carry out his duties over his final six months in office. The scourge of the Bluegrass, Junior Samples impersonator Rep. Jamie Comer (R-TheFrankfortLoop), chair of the House Oversight and Accountability, who leads the list of lawmakers who have made a fool out of themselves over the past three and a half years, is up to his old tricks.
Comer, who has spent the entire Biden administration insisting that the president was the brains behind the Biden Crime Family as it pillaged the nation from Maine to California (only to succeed in establishing that the entire notion was bogus) is now saying this brilliant, felonious mastermind is so addled that other people are running the White House in his stead. So he has subpoenaed three presidential aides to testify about the decline.
The aides, Comer said, are “seeking to cover up President Biden’s declining cognitive state inside the White House. President Biden is clearly unfit for office, yet his staff are trying to hide the truth from the American people. Key White House staff must come before our committee so we can provide the transparency and accountability that Americans deserve.”
Now Gomer Comer is seeking to expand this silly and useless probe by suggesting that Harris is part of the plot to cover-up Biden’s mental deficiency.
“Was there a shadow government operation? I don’t think there’s any question whether or not Joe Biden was able to be running the day-to-day operations,’’ Comer said. “He was not. Now, who was making the decisions? Who was calling the shots?”
What a twit.
Biden is suffering the ravages of old age. He moves gingerly because of a bad left foot and arthritis in his back. He often stumbles over words in his presentations because he has a stutter, something he continually seeks to control.
On the surface, primarily as a result of his debate showing, it’s obvious Biden has slowed physically, and his mind is not as nimble as it once was. But he has performed admirably on other occasions – the State of the Union and the NATO conference – and the president’s personal physician, Dr. Kevin O’Conner, reported in February that “an extremely detailed neurological exam was again reassuring in that there were no findings which would be consistent with any cerebellar or other central neurological disorder …”
As far as can be seen, no crisis has occurred because of the president’s infirmities. There is no evidence that he has been displaced by some ruling junta. He is still the president. And while subordinates have sought to present him in the best light (that’s their job, after all), there is no “shadow government,” an idea put forth by the Tompkinsville moron to create controversy and serve the nefarious purposes of the GOP by scaring the public into thinking no one is at the wheel.
Now, with Biden’s exit, in a satisfying case of turnabout-is-fair-play, the Lord of Mar-a-Lago, Donald J. Trump, is, at 78, the oldest presidential nominee in history.
And if you think Biden is experiencing mental deficiency, hoo-boy, wait til you get a load of this guy.
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Written by Bill Straub, a member of the Kentucky Journalism Hall of Fame. Cross-posted from the NKY Tribune.
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