RW Johnson on Biden’s decline: Echoes of Woodrow Wilson’s final days in office

RW Johnson writes that Joe Biden's debate with Donald Trump exposed Biden's cognitive decline, making him unfit for the presidency. Despite Biden's attempts to move past the incident, ongoing media scrutiny highlights his deteriorating condition. Johnson draws parallels to Woodrow Wilson's incapacitated presidency, emphasizing the need for the Democratic Party to decisively address Biden's situation..Sign up for your early morning brew of the BizNews Insider to keep you up to speed with the content that matters. The newsletter will land in your inbox at 5:30am weekdays. Register here..Join us for BizNews' first investment-focused conference on Thursday, 12 September, in Hermanus, featuring top experts like Frans Cronje, Piet Viljoen, and more. Get insights on electricity and exploiting SA's gas bounty from new and familiar faces. Register here..By RW Johnson .___STEADY_PAYWALL___.Ever since his disastrous debate with Donald Trump Joe Biden has been trying hard to get Americans to "move on" and put that awful revelation behind them, just as Biden himself has clearly done. But of course they can't. What the audience of 51 million saw was not just that Biden was incoherent, rambling and couldn't finish a sentence. Anyone with any sense could see immediately that, quite apart from Biden's transparent inability to deal with another four years in the Oval Office, he was not only incapable of waging an exhausting four month campaign against Trump but, pretty certainly, he couldn't really be doing his presidential job right now. And probably hadn't been for some time. Later reassurances by his staff that the President was pretty much compos mentis between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. but that he needed to get to bed by 8 p.m. merely confirmed that Biden was already a long way from having either the mental or physical stamina to do his job..Read more: 🔒 RW Johnson: Immigration chaos – Biden's border blunder and Starmer's warning.Ever since then the media has fastened on each new speech, meeting or presidential occasion as a crucial new "test" in which Biden might or might not "prove" that he was still able to be President. This was an absurd mediatic lens, pumping up each moment as a crucial new hurdle when things might go one way or another. This is ridiculous. What Biden has is a general condition, one which is bound now to deteriorate further – and quite fast. There is no real possibility that Biden can, by some heroic effort of will, throw off that condition like Superman overcoming kryptonite in a comic strip..In fact there are two other key questions. One is that there has clearly been a huge and, up till now, successful cover-up during which Biden's true condition has been concealed from the world. Who exactly has been organizing that cover-up ? It has been on a Watergate scale. It's now obvious that Biden has only got as far as he has to winning the Democratic nomination because neither his voters, his donors nor Democratic Senators and Congressmen have been allowed to know his true condition. It's been a huge confidence trick. The second question is who exactly has been running the White House for this last while ?.It's all rather reminiscent of Woodrow Wilson who had a major stroke on October 2, 1919. Dr Bert Park, his doctor, wrote that the illness had a major effect on Wilson's personality, making him prone to "disorders of emotion, impaired impulse control and defective judgement". He was, in other words, comprehensively unable to be President and had his true state been known, his Vice President, Thomas Marshall, would have taken his place. But the only other person who knew of Wilson's true condition was his wife, Edith. Ellen, Wilson's wife of 25 years, had died in 1914 and he had married Edith in 1915. Wilson was determined not to relinquish the presidency and, indeed, was keen to run again in 1920 – a preposterous notion. So not even Vice President Marshall was allowed to see the President. .Edith now became Wilson's spokesperson to the world. She would emerge at intervals to say that this was what the President wished or, indeed, ordered – and his staff had no option but to obey. Nonetheless, word leaked out and by February 1920 Wilson's general condition was known. Wilson still refused to give way and he remained President until early March 2021. He tried to insist that he would run again but the Democratic leaders in Congress were adamantly against and that was that. .During these last 17 months of Wilson's presidency, with Edith effectively in charge, the country went to hell. The Senate threw out both the Treaty of Versailles and refused to join the League of Nations. The demobilisation of America's four million soldiers was a chaotic mess. There were waves of strikes and race riots. The economy dipped into depression, farm prices sank, bankrupting many farmers, and unemployment doubled. There was a series of anarchist bombings, leading to the great Red Scare in which over 10,000 people were summarily arrested (Wilson didn't even know this was happening) and a bomb in Wall Street killed 40 and injured hundreds. Both Prohibition and female suffrage were passed. Congress did what it liked and even when Wilson tried to veto legislation (e.g. Prohibition) it gaily over-rode his veto..Read more: 🔒 Biden defiant amid calls to step back from 2024 race: Timothy L. O'Brien.Thus far, happily, Biden's shaky rule has not been so sorely tested – though Netanyahu has simply brushed him aside and Congress held up arms supplies to Ukraine to a point where Ukraine was staring defeat in the face. Both the Russians and Chinese have been emboldened to act in increasingly provocative ways. As with Wilson, everyone senses Biden's weakness..In Biden's interview with George Stefanopoulos, Biden was asked how he would feel if he stayed the course as President but then lost to Trump, with all that that would entail. Biden replied that provided he had given it his all, he would feel OK – "that's what this is about". But that, of course, is silly, selfish and irresponsible. For example, imagine Biden somehow forced himself into the US Olympic team to run the 100 metres. We all know that that race will be won in under 10 seconds and that Biden would come last. If he then said "but I gave it my all – and that's what this is about", he would quite rightly be told not to be stupid and that he should never have been in that race. It's the same with the Presidential election. It's just a race he should never be in. Whether or not he "gave it his all" would, frankly, be quite irrelevant..It is also quite absurd to say that Biden is the only one who can decide whether or not he'll run. The man has created a huge national mess, appointing a hopeless Vice President, hiding his own condition and not preparing the succession to see off Trump. In addition, he is now an old man out of touch with reality, indeed, trying to hide from it, and the idea that everything now depends on his clearly defective judgement is ridiculous. The Democratic party needs to be as firm and decisive with Joe Biden as it was with Woodrow Wilson..Read also:.🔒 Biden still intent on running for re-election after NATO summit gaffesWhy the media is obsessed with Joe Biden's age🔒 Hollywood giants call for Biden to end re-election campaign

RW Johnson on Biden’s decline: Echoes of Woodrow Wilson’s final days in office

Related Stories