By Rich Lowry
Tuesday, July 12, 2022
Perhaps the best decision Joe Biden could make as
president would be to stand down.
It would be a welcome act of statesmanship and
self-awareness if the 79-year-old president dropped the insistence that he’s
running for a second term and instead announced, sometime after the November
midterms, that he isn’t running again.
He was too old to run in 2020 but made his way by default
into the office he had coveted for decades.
In two and a half years, Biden won’t be any younger, and
the chances of something going catastrophically wrong only increase with time.
The country’s experience with a 78- and 79-year-old
president hasn’t been pretty. Just wait until Biden is 82 (at the time of his
theoretical second inauguration), or 84 (after the second midterms), or 86 (at
the end of his second term).
A New York Times report confirms about
what you’d expect of White House aides. They fear that Biden, who increasingly
shuffles when he walks, will trip over a wire. They hold their breath hoping he
can get to the end of remarks without making a gaffe. They generally don’t have
events for him at night and try to keep the weekends free.
In an office that requires vigor and forcefulness, he’s
mumbly and bleached-out. In a position that makes young men suddenly look much
older, he’s already quite aged. In a job where words matter, he can’t keep his
straight.
Yes, there have been elderly leaders of nations who have
been unquestioned giants — Konrad Adenauer, Charles de Gaulle, Ariel Sharon. No
one is mistaking Biden for a statesman of such caliber, though. He’s more like
President Jimmy Carter with a quarter-century more on the odometer.
Even in the unlikely event that Biden’s age isn’t
affecting how he can do his job now, it will at some point.
Then there are the disaster scenarios. We should all hope
that Biden lives to be 100, but if he died in office of natural causes, it
would be a significant national trauma. We haven’t had a president die in
office in half a century, and it would create comparisons to the gerontocracy
of the late Soviet Union.
If anyone thinks American politics is poisonous now, just
wait till there’s an unelected president (the vice president would succeed
Biden in this scenario) and an unelected vice president appointed by the
unelected president. All this would be the process set out by the 25th Amendment;
it would generate legitimacy concerns all the same.
If a health event prevented Biden from performing his
duties, meanwhile, it would create a crisis at the top of our government. The
natural tendency of politicians and their loyalists is to be less than
forthcoming about health problems. What Edith Wilson did when Woodrow Wilson
had an incapacitating stroke — hide it as much as possible and carry on
regardless — wouldn’t be possible in the current media age. That doesn’t mean
there’d be transparency.
The process for sidelining a debilitated president under
the 25th Amendment is a mess, especially if the president doesn’t agree that
he’s incapable of discharging his duties — such a scenario would make an
impeachment look neat and clean by comparison.
Perhaps none of this would ever come to pass and a
reelected Biden would make it to the finish line with ease, proving that 85 is
the new 75. It’s also true that anything could happen to anyone of any age —
even a 45-year-old president could fall ill. But the longer Biden serves, the
higher the risks.
And for what? Biden isn’t uniquely gifted, ideologically
compelling, irresistibly likable, or very good at being president. His claim to
be the only Democrat who can beat Donald Trump in 2024 looks weaker by the day.
In short, there’s no good reason for Biden not to make
the best call of his presidency and prepare for retirement.
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