Suddenly, it was again in 2024.
Once again, we plead the performance of Joe Biden’s catatonic debate, his approach to exclusion, his memory eaten by butterflies and his selfish illusion, he deserved a second mandate in the White House while browsing his ninth decade on earth.
Biden’s brutal announcement that he faces an advanced form of prostate cancer only increased speculation about what the president’s inner circle knew and when they knew.
“Original Sin”, a book by journalists Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson, published this week, is full of anecdotes illustrating the lengths to which Biden’s family and caregiver worked to protect his mental and physical towers of voters.
John Robert Greene is not surprised at all.
“This is an old news, hiding a presidential disease,” said Greene, who wrote a shelf full of books on the presidents and the presidency. “I can’t think too much … who was the image of health.”
Before going further, let us declare the file that this does not in any way tolerate the actions of Biden and its political catalysts. To be clear, let’s repeat it in capital letters: what Biden and its managers did was bad.
But, as Greene suggests, it was not unprecedented or terribly unusual. History abounds with examples of minimized or kept presidential diseases.
Grover Cleveland has undergone surgery for mouth cancer on a yacht in the port of New York to prevent its state from being widely known. Woodrow Wilson underwent a debilitating stroke, a fact covered by his wife and confidant, who exercised extraordinary power in his place.
Franklin D. Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy both underwent serious chronic diseases that have moved away from the public’s eyes.
Surrounding them Ronald Reagan minimized his injuries after an assassination attempt in 1981, and the Trump administration induced the public induced the public on the gravity of the president’s state after being diagnosed with COVID-19 a month before the 2020 elections.
The ability to orient badly, in the case of Biden, or to mislead, as has occurred under Trump, illustrates one of the magical characteristics of the White House: the capacity of a president to hide at sight.
“When you are in the presidency, there is nothing that you cannot hide for a while,” said Greene, professor of emeritus history in Cazenovia College, from his home in New York. “You have everything at your disposal to live a completely hidden double life, if you want. Everything, secret services to the Bubble of the White House. “
Greene compared the neoclassical manor to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. to a giant fish bowl – which is painted from the inside. It’s very visible, but you can’t really see what’s going on inside.
Who deflates the idea that there was a conspiracy of Grand Media to support Biden. (Sorry, enemies.)
Yes, detractors will say that it was clear because the day native that Biden was denied, decreased and obviously not up to the presidency. Today, Trump’s criticism say the same kind of thing about it; From their armchairs, they even offer fairly specific diagnoses: he suffers from dementia, or Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s disease.
That doesn’t do it.
“It is a very politicized process. People see what they want to see, “said Jacob Appel, professor of psychiatry and medical education at the Icahn School of Medicine in New York, which writes a book on presidential health.
“You can watch Ronald Reagan video bands in 1987,” said, “and depending on your vision of him. You can see it as clear and funny as ever, or be on the point of dementia.” (Five years after leaving the White House, Reagan – then 83 years old – announced that he was in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease.)
To an uncomfortable degree, those covering the White House – and, by extension, the public they serve – are forced to count on all that the White House chooses to reveal.
“I have no assignment power,” said Stephen Battaglio du Times, saying that he would have impatiently published the details contained in his new book if sources had been ready to go out while Biden was still in power. “We were lied again and again.”
It hasn’t always been like this.
In September 1955, during his first term, President Dwight D. Eisenhower underwent a heart attack during golf holidays in Denver. “” It was sudden, “said Jim Newton, an Eisenhower biographer.” One minute, it is fine and the next minute, it was flat on the back, literally. “”
Details surrounding Eisenhower’s immediate treatment remain a mystery, although Newton suggests that it may have done more with the protection of his personal doctor, who did not diagnose the heart attack as an indigestion access, that a deliberate attempt to deceive the public.
From this moment, the White House was to come – offering daily reports on what Eisenhower ate, its blood pressure, the results of various tests – to the point that it embarrassed the president. (Among the information published, there was an accounting of the stools of IKE.)
“They were consciously transparent,” said Newton. “The White House looked at Wilson’s example as something not to imitate.”
Less than 14 months later, Eisenhower had recovered sufficiently – and the voters had enough confidence in his well -being – that he won his second term in a landslide.
But this 70 -year example is a notable exception.
As long as there are members of the White House staff, campaign advisers, political strategists and family members, the presidents will be surrounded by incentives to minimize, minimize or obscure the physical or mental illnesses they face during their mandate.
All we can do is wait – years, decades – for the truth to come out. And, in the meantime, hope the best.
