Published July 22, 2024
President Joe Biden deserves the same respect any former president gets for having served our nation. But the widespread praise he is receiving for his decision not to run for election should be tempered by the way his administration handled his all-too-evident decline.
It had become clear that last month’s disastrous debate performance was not a one-off anomaly. A growing number of news reports suggested a president who skipped evening events, required extraordinary accommodations from his staff and foreign leaders, appeared more and more listless and forgetful, increasingly relied on teleprompters for even routine occasions — and still got key details wrong. Anonymous advisers told the press they didn’t know how key policy decisions were being made. The White House had to correct the record on the nature of doctors’ visits by the president.
And yet, until an earlier-than-usual late June debate, the American public largely didn’t know about this. It took a nationally televised flameout for these reports to break through, illustrating two trends in contemporary American life, neither of them good. It provides another prime example of how siloed our country has become, and how impulses of political purity can end up silencing critical voices. And it showcases how the language of individualism has corrupted our leaders’ ability to think about their party’s — or nation’s — long-term well-being.
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Patrick T. Brown is a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, where his work with the Life and Family Initiative focuses on developing a robust pro-family economic agenda and supporting families as the cornerstone of a healthy and flourishing society.
