HOW IT STARTED: How Joe Biden Is Positioning Himself as a Modern FDR.
—Time magazine, October 28th, 2020*.
How it’s going: The Last Time an Unfit Incumbent Ran for Reelection.
Few self-respecting physicians with the trust of the president are going to betray it. By early 1944, FDR had been diagnosed with a life-threatening condition, namely “acute congestive heart failure.” An examining physician called his health status simply “God-awful.”
Nonetheless, the White House rolled out FDR’s doctor in September to pronounce the president’s health “perfectly O.K.,” with “absolutely no organic difficulties at all.” He said the president, who had experienced alarming weight loss, had just decided to shed some pounds and that he’s “proud of his flat — repeat F-L-A-T — tummy.”
Journalistic defenders can be trusted to attack and shame anyone who mistrusts the official story.
Pro-Roosevelt writer Marquis Childs called the well-founded rumors about FDR’s health a “wicked business” and “the vilest kind of fear campaign.” The problem wasn’t FDR’s underlying condition but the malignancy of his enemies: “Some people hate the President so much that the wish is father to the thought that his health is seriously undermined.”
Sound familiar?
Of course, the political allies will always do their duty. Harry Truman, recently selected as FDR’s new vice-presidential nominee, told reporters after a lunch with the president that he was “still the leader he’s always been, and don’t let anybody kid you about it.”
Truman told a friend, in contrast, that the president’s “hands are shaking and he talks with considerable difficulty.” According to Truman, FDR was “just going to pieces” physically, and he said he was like “a phonograph record played at the wrong speed.”
This wasn’t an unusual reaction. People around Roosevelt were in great fear of his dying, yet no one let on.
—Rich Lowry, NRO, today.
Hopefully this isn’t an exact repeat of 1944. Otherwise, which nation will Kamala, Michelle, or Gavin nuke first shortly after taking office?
Related: Biden Will Once Again Refuse to Take a Cognitive Test at His Upcoming Physical.
* Joe’s boss also got the “next FDR” treatment from Time magazine in 2008, of course.