{"id":94997,"date":"2025-04-06T05:00:41","date_gmt":"2025-04-06T09:00:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=94997"},"modified":"2025-04-05T16:50:59","modified_gmt":"2025-04-05T20:50:59","slug":"upwards-of-86-percent-of-americans-thought-he-was-too-old-to-serve-another-term-and-no-one-did-anything-about-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2025\/04\/06\/upwards-of-86-percent-of-americans-thought-he-was-too-old-to-serve-another-term-and-no-one-did-anything-about-it\/","title":{"rendered":"“[U]pwards of 86 percent of Americans thought he was too old to serve another term. And no one did anything about it<\/em>“"},"content":{"rendered":"

Andrew Sullivan<\/a> reacts to some new books on the Biden administration just hitting the bookstores recently:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

By April of last year, the health of the president had clearly declined. As with many older men in their eighties, this didn’t happen in a slow, predictable glide-path down \u2014 but in swift, turbulent declines. Suddenly he took a while to get out of his limo, and then would emerge “with a blank look in his face”, according to the new campaign book, Fight<\/em>, by Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes. By early summer, Biden was suddenly freezing up in public, staring motionless into the air. At a fundraiser in Los Angeles, Obama had to jump in to answer some questions, and then had to guide Biden off the stage by hand. We had already seen Joe wander weirdly off the set<\/a> of MSNBC and during a Medal of Honor ceremony. His memory lapses<\/a> mounted.<\/p>\n

Everyone around him saw this. Everyone close to him had seen it for over a year by then. Everyone in his campaign knew that upwards of 86 percent of Americans<\/a> thought he was too old to serve another term. And no one did anything about it<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Sometimes human folly is just human folly. Sometimes, even at the pinnacle of the world, you find flawed people struggling with familiar human problems, like how to tell a beloved but fast-aging man that he needs to leave the stage before he falls off it. Just because she was First Lady did not prevent Jill Biden from putting family before country; and just because he was president didn’t mean that Biden reacted to his own decline with denial, anger, pig-headedness, and arrogance.<\/p>\n

Do we learn anything new in this book and another one, Uncharted<\/em>, by Chris Whipple out next week? Not really. We know, in fact, that everything I guessed happened did actually happen. Among the unsurprising confirmations: Obama was so aloof he didn’t even watch the fateful June debate live; he and Pelosi then wanted an open primary and did all they could to get one. (“He goes. She goes” was their mantra.) Hillary Clinton defended Biden \u2014 not because she knew his health was fine, but because her health had once been questioned by the press too. Biden’s closest advisers were his wife and, yes, his son Hunter, and they routinely put their clan’s interests well before the country’s. His inner circle \u2014 Mike Donilon especially \u2014 were so blindly loyal and informationally siloed they couldn’t absorb what was staring them in the face.<\/p>\n

The Democrats, even as late as July, could have found a fresh candidate capable of taking on what they said was a vital moment for democracy’s survival. We might have avoided our current abyss:<\/p>\n