Having read the introductory galleys of the book "Original Sin", by Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson, I'm inclined to make generalized conclusions that really aren't anything new, as stricken as we are by 47's undermining of our system and revanche against his purported enemies.
Take a step back for a minute and I'll reintroduce you to a little history, history that has in fact been mentioned in this space but it doesn't hurt to repeat. It's something that nobody has brought up in the hubbub over Biden's obvious, sad and tragically devastating decline while in office.
I bring this back up because there's a good chance this has happened before, and not that long ago. The argument was never fully vetted, because an untrusted source got it right, but a trusted source responded with indignant shock and got it wrong.
I hosted a gathering in Washington, DC, when I lived there some 12 years ago. I was introduced to a gentleman, now deceased, who had been in the Reagan administration--in fact, had been in the Situation Room, as its called, the place where foreign and military policy is carried out and redefined during crises. His connection with the president wasn't close, but he got to know those that were.
And he told me, without prompting: He had it in good confidence that Reagan didn't have all his mental faculties for at least the last year and a half of his second term.
That comment didn't surprise me. The signs were obvious: Keeping him away from the press; minimizing his public appearances; quickly glossing over and getting him to back away from comments that indicated he couldn't remember one country from another (as in Beirut as opposed to Israel). There was no doubt that, at 77, he was slowing up. What nobody knew--in fact we still don't know and we may never know-- how much his decision-making was taken over by others as he became little more than a figurehead.
Or not. Bill O'Reilly's research led him to hidden places. He wrote the book "Killing Reagan" as part of his "Killing" series, and discovered that James Cannon, a White House aide, wrote a memo to Chief of Staff Howard Baker in 1987--just about when my acquaintance worked in the Situation Room--that suggested "the possibility that relieving the president of his duties (i.e. invoking the 25th Amendment) might be in order." But Cannon also recanted that memo, or so said Reagan's Attorney General, Edward Meese. Both are deceased now.
But what caused Cannon to recant? Was he honestly mistaken, incorrectly analyzing some obvious mistake Reagan made for senility? Or was he leaned on by less objective sources who wanted to protect Reagan's legacy? If so, who leaned on him? Could that source have been Reagan's wife, Nancy, who brooked no criticism of her husband, ever, and was one person who people never crossed if they could help it?
George Will, conservative columnist and one with far more credibility with the mainstream press, because he belonged to it and still does, writing occasionally for The Washington Post, spoke out against O'Reilly almost immediately after the latter's research became public. Will's wife, after all, was a member of the Reagan administration's communications team, so he took her support to heart, as husbands tend to do. If you add Will's stature, O'Reilly's findings were quickly quashed and we all went on with this nagging question being left in our minds.
Of course O'Reilly objected to people who never wished to conduct further scrutiny: "It is preposterous that there wasn't an intense concern about the president's mental state shortly after the Iran-Contra scandal broke," he later said, about ten years ago. "That is a fact, and it is disturbing that Reagan loyalists have attacked us for pointing it out."
It's possible that it's both. Reagan died of Alzheimer's disease, that awful diminishment of the mind. Could it have begun while he was in the White House? Yes, indeed it could have. His moments of lucidity, though, might have outnumbered his moments of vacating memory, at least for that time; Alzheimer's doesn't attack all at once.
But it's clear, from O'Reilly's standpoint, that Iran-Contra brought Reagan's infirmity into clarity, or should have. I have little doubt that Cannon's memo was nothing less than a vetting of conversations that he either had been privy to or had had himself; White House memos are rarely justified by mere brainstorms. And O'Reilly found it, or discovered its existence. Such is what happens when someone wants someone else to remember something.
That, too, is a cover-up, one that continues. History is robbed by it. Someone should unearth it for the sake of clarity and future considerations.
We are left with the malady that afflicts White House insiders under these circumstances: that if you try hard enough, you can fool yourself into thinking that your boss still has all his marbles, or at least enough to continue in the job without attacks on that basis. There's an enormous difference, though, between Reagan's situation and that of Joe Biden: Reagan was well into his second term. I'm sure those that knew about his mental faculties had an unspoken--maybe spoken but maybe not recorded anywhere; an assumption with a wink and a nod--agreement to take him in for what's called a 'soft landing', where no great national crisis takes place and other people take over decisions for him.
Joe Biden, on the other hand, wanted desperately to defeat 47 and continue his policies--who wouldn't--so his aides were in a far more impossible position: try to fake his lucidity through the grinding of another nationwide campaign and on through another four years. But the debate tore the curtain back from that Wizard of Oz; there was nowhere else to hide, no spinning that would suffice.
Who was his most ferocious defender? Once again--Jill, his wife, who people didn't want to cross. As you might figure. Biden did, finally, accede to logic and polling, and stepped aside. But it's now clear that the smoothing over and covering up of his infirmities began far before last July. It's just that, as the public and its media keep doing, as wishful thinking drives us to accept, we refused to confirm what our eyes clearly saw--the halting stride, the garbled speaking, the forgetting of details.
Could we have been saved from this present effort to erode democracy? Maybe. We'll never know because Democrats, in their shared desire to smooth over challenges, because no one wanted to be the first to cry wolf. They took Biden's endorsement, didn't outwardly question the mentality behind it, and nominated Kamala Harris, who became one of the great disappointments in presidential campaign history, right up there with Michael Dukakis, who also somehow snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. And now we (again) have a corrupt, terrible president who is not only amoral, but may in fact be also losing his marbles, little by little, and who will certainly resist any future soothsayer who suggests that he should step down.
Granted, the 25th Amendment is there for such a situation. But as has been noted in this space, a president's Cabinet isn't likely to be the first to acknowledge such a potentially damaging dilemma; it's likely to be the last. So we need another Constitutional amendment putting a ceiling on, perhaps, the age at which someone can be elected president--allowing for someone to cross that line if already in office. We have a basement age, 35, already in the Constitution; why not a ceiling? Let's call it 70, so if someone happens to begin his first term at 69, he won't be older than 77 when he leaves office.
It would have take Joe Biden out of the running in 2020, true. But look what happened. Look where we are. Look where we could be. He could have also won, for one thing, and now he's been diagnosed with metastasizing, prostate cancer. But someone else could have won, too, someone who would have inspired more confidence than a decent but failing leader. It's worth more than a passing thought.
Be well. Be careful. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.
Mister Mark