President Franklyn D. Roosevelt uttered the above words at a press conference shortly after he was re-elected to serve a second term in 1936. Roosevelt offered these remarks on the incapacity of old age in order to justify his plan to pack the Supreme Court with new justices. During his first term parts of his New Deal agenda had been declared unconstitutional by the Court. Since Roosevelt could not fire or replace the existing judges, he proposed to add one new judge for every judge on the Court over the age of 70. His remarks, ironic as they were coming from a man crippled with paralysis conveniently hidden by a favorable press, did not go over well and he had to scrap the plan.
Although his remarks on the problems of old age were just a bald-faced attempt to justify his court packing scheme, I can say, at the age of 83, that there is truth in them. Even when I retired 15 years ago, I was finding it difficult to do the ordinary tasks of my financial planning practice, as well as keep up with new developments in the field. At the time, I realized that it was time to hand over my clients to younger planners. It was time to retire.
Two years ago, when Joe Biden ran for President, it was obvious to me that he was suffering from old age. After a long, undistinguished career, the Democratic party should have put him out to pasture but since none of the other Democratic candidates had any popular appeal, Biden seemed to be the only one with a chance to defeat President Trump. His run for the Presidency was sad to watch as his advisors prevailed upon him to campaign from his basement, and make as few public appearances as possible.
Now, after 18 months as President, his incapacity is even more obvious. He stumbles and falls. He holds few press conferences and only speaks in public using a teleprompter, and even then, he fumbles for words. At my age, I can understand. I gave up lecturing at my local senior center three years ago because it took too much out of me. But Biden is President of the United States. He carries the nuclear codes around with him.
I do not want to make a list of mistakes President Biden has made since taking office. But I would like to point out what he hasn’t done and is obviously incapable of doing. He is not capable of being the leader of the free world. Russia invades Ukraine and where is the impassioned appeal for peace from the President of the United States.? Where is the appearance at the U.N. calling for a cease-fire and a peace conference? Two members of that organization are launching missiles at each other. Soldiers and civilians are dying every day. Where is the outrage on the part of our President? What has happened to the summit meeting with Vladimir Putin?
Rather than become a world-class leader the President has become a world-class denier. He takes responsibility for nothing, and just blames others. He denied that the retreat from Afghanistan was a fiasco. He blamed President Trump for 250,000 Covid deaths during his term in office and claimed that alone made him unfit for the office. Now that over 700,000 Covid deaths have occurred since he took office, he expresses no regret and assumes no responsibility. He and his advisors claimed that inflation was only transitory but now that gasoline prices are at an all-time high, his party re-names a multi-billion spending bill, the Inflation Reduction act.
From the day of his election, I have believed that President Biden would not be able to complete his term of office, much less run again in 2024 at the age of 82. Old age will continue to take its toll, but there is also the possibility that circumstances might lead Democratic party leaders to force him to step down, especially if the upcoming mid-term elections turn out to be a disaster.
Eight years after Franklyn D. Roosevelt uttered the words cited above, he was running for an unprecedented fourth term in the midst of WWII. His party pushed his nomination even though leaders knew he was a dying man. James Farley, an astute politician, and one of FDR’s long-time supporters resigned from his leadership position in protest over the impending nomination. He thought the Democratic party would be unfaithful to its principles if it nominated Roosevelt for another term that would likely kill him.
“anyone with a grain of common sense would surely realize from the appearance of the President that he is not a well man and there is not a chance in the world for him to carry on four years more and face the problems that a President will have before him; he just can’t survive another presidential term.”
The above quotes are from Bret Baier’s 2019 book on Roosevelt, Three Days at the Brink, FDR’s Daring Gamble to Win World War II. According to Baier, Farley thought that “Democratic politicians were taking the easy way out, protecting their own hides at the expense of the national good.”
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