the kerfuffle if Biden knew he had prostate cancer ignores the fact that people with prostate cancer often live for years with it, or can be cured. Mayor Guilliani comes to mind.
There are reasons that the president might conceal such a diagnosis from the public who might in their ignorance think having cancer is the same as being incompetent, and of course allowing his political enemies to use the diagnosis to harm his policies and the nation.
Grover Cleveland comes to mind:
////
notice he lost his first reelection due to the electoral college? Nothing new under the sun.
But he was seen as the one who could reform the country from the powerful who were corrupting the country. So he won the next election.
So why the big argument now if Biden knew he had cancer?
I suspect it is to silence the real question: if President Biden was incompetent and others were running the country.
This was considered a conspiracy theory until Tapper decided to become a whistleblower and release a book documenting President Biden's cognitive disability at times, and also admitting a lot of people were lying about it, or conveniently not seeing what was going on.
and this too has a historical precedent:
......
and some of us are old enough to remember when Eisenhower had a heart attack from which he recovered nicely, but more seriously, in 1957 he had a minor stroke....
The statement emphasized that Eisenhower's ...Vice President Nixon expressed confidence that the president "is fully capable of making" any major decision, although he stated that he didn't expect any major decisions to come up within "the next few days." He made his statement after speaking with Attorney General William P. Rogers, following the latter's conference with White House physicians.
one result of this was the 25th amendment that passed in 1967.
Sections 3 and 4 deal with scenarios where the president may suffer an “inability” or a “disability.”
Starting with George Washington, who had a serious health scare as president, there have been numerous situations where the chief executive may have been “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.” For example, Woodrow Wilson and Grover Cleveland had serious health problems while in office before the 25th Amendment went into effect. James Garfield was incapacitated for months after he was shot by an assassin and later died in office. Franklin Pierce, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Dwight D. Eisenhower also dealt with health issues.
and since that time, President Reagan (after being shot), President Bush (while under anesthesia) and President Trump (When hospitalized with covid) were temporarily unable to work as president, but this was not invoked.
In such cases, the 25th Amendment’s Section 3 allows the president to notify Congress that he has designated the vice president to act as president until the president is able to resume work. This has happened briefly in three instances in modern times when Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush notified Congress before they went under general anesthesia for medical procedures.
so how does this affect President Biden?
One suspects he would have resigned if it was put to him bluntly that his health made him incompetent (as was done after the debates and a health scare in Los Vegas, where Democrats pressured him not to run for reelection).
But the procedure to remove a president is more complicated:
Section 4 is the most controversial part of the 25th Amendment: It allows the vice president and either the Cabinet or a body approved “by law” formed by Congress, to jointly agree that “the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.”
In theory, this clause was designed to deal with a situation where an incapacitated president couldn’t tell Congress that the vice president needed to act as president. Senator Birch Bayh, who played a critical role in championing the 25th Amendment, explained Section 4 was designed to deal with “an impairment of the President’s faculties, meaning that he is unable either to make or communicate his decisions as to his own competency to execute the powers and duties of his office.”
but this part might explain why the 25th amendment was not invoked: President Biden, and/or those who actually were helping him run the country would have fought such a move, and it would have been messy.
Section 4 also allows the president to protest such a decision, and for two-thirds of Congress to decide in the end if the president is unable to serve due to a condition perceived by the vice president, and either the Cabinet or a body approved by Congress.
so if that was done, one suspects there would have been a fight over the removal of the president against his will and the will of his party.
Of course, if the politicians were honest and more worried about the state of the country rather than politics, they would have arranged Biden to resign, but as I have pointed out earlier, when the only Democrat who was willing to go on record in the NYT editorial that he should not run for reelection was an actor, George Clooney, not an elected official or someone working for the Democratic party, it makes the coverup of Biden's incapacity even more serious.
And that, not the fact that President Biden had cancer is what should be discussed.
Sargent Schultz call your office. Lots of people agree with you:
No comments:
Post a Comment