Who knows why the mainstream media failed to level with the American people? Failed to tell us the truth about how frail and feeble Joe Biden was during the entirety of his presidency.
Ideally, we would anyway have known. Ideally leading Democrats, among which I include members of the House and Senate, should have said, publicly, that under no circumstances should Biden run again in 2024. For neither his physical nor mental health was up to being chief executive of the United States of America for another four years.
Thanks to outstanding investigative journalism by four Wall Street Journal reporters – their recent piece was based on some 50 interviews – we are finally getting a sense of how, from day one of his presidency, Biden was protected from prying eyes by family and close aides. But we the people were not protected. We were not informed and so remained ignorant of Biden’s failing health until we saw for ourselves, in his “debate” last June with Donald Trump.
Edith Bolling Galt Wilson was the wife of President Woodrow Wilson. After he was felled by a stroke, she thought to protect him by concealing from nearly everyone his true condition. But that was then – in the early 20th century when veils of secrecy and silence still shielded the high and mighty. Now though such niceties are supposed no longer to exist. Now the American public is supposed to be told if the president is failing.
Here is some of what we did not know in 2021, or in 2022, or in 2023, or for most of 2024.
- That during the 2020 presidential campaign it was suggested to Jill Biden she limit her activities, so her husband would not seem sluggish in comparison.
- That visitors to the Biden White House were instructed to keep their meetings short and focused.
- That even the most important members of the president’s cabinet – for example, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin- saw him only infrequently, or very infrequently, especially during his second two years in the White House.
- That Biden often depended on top aides to serve as stand-ins.
- That these same aides shielded the president from negative press coverage.
- That even as the 2024 campaign ramped up, Biden was not in touch with his own pollsters.
- That limits were set on to whom Biden spoke, on what he was told, and on what information he was given.
- That Biden had good days and bad days. That on his bad days he could not remember key lines or simple instructions, such as where to enter and exit a stage. Similarly, on some bad days meetings were simply canceled.
- That during his four years in office Biden held only nine full cabinet meetings. (This year was only one.) This in comparison with, for example, his immediate predecessor, Donald Trump, who held 25.
- That Biden engaged in far fewer press conferences and media interviews than any of his seven predecessors. President Barack Obama had 570 in total – this in contrast to, as of last summer, Biden’s 164.
- That Biden was kept at a distance not only from the press but from Congress – and from some of his own aides.
It can be argued and often is that during his one term Biden chalked up an impressive list of accomplishments. But the Democrats were unable to capitalize on them in the election. And now Biden has essentially exited the national stage while his successor is already front and center. The incumbent president has evolved into an exaggerated version of what he has been all along: not so much a lame duck as a missing duck.
People need a leader. People want a leader. The American people are no exception. We need a president. We want a president. But even during his four years in the Oval Office Joe Biden was more spectral than palpable – while Trump was and is the opposite. Trump was never an absence – even in exile he was a presence. Now as throughout he looms.