Roosevelt deciding to run in 1944 can be compared to Biden today.
5 July 2024 — Good politicians, even historically great ones, can make terrible, selfish decisions.
And then there are the mediocre ones.
The UK just completed an election which saw the Labour Party come to power for the first time in 14 years, in a landslide victory. They won 412 seats in Parliament, needing only 326 to have a majority position. The ruling Conservative Party was devastated, losing 251 seats.
The inquests on what-went-wrong will be brutal but one explanation is devastatingly simple: how and why did the Conservative Party Prime Minister Rishi Sunak make the foolish decision to gamble on an early election – without consulting any of his party’s operations apparatus so they could prepare? Of course, most blame will fall on Sunak’s hopeless campaign and a public responding with disgust and contempt towards a government they associated with incompetence and chaos and corruption. But whether the issue was taxes, public services, immigration, the COVID response, the corruption – the party was judged to have failed them.
And in France, President Emmanuel Macron also called a snap-election. After Macron’s party suffered a bruising loss in the European Parliament elections last month to the far-right party of Marine Le Pen, Macron called for French parliamentary elections – and, again, like Sunak, without consulting any of his party’s operations apparatus so they could prepare.
And, like Sunak misjudged the English public, Macron has completely misjudged the views of the French public regarding his economic reforms, like raising the retirement age from 62 to 64 or repeatedly reducing unemployment benefits. He has become wildly unpopular. Part of the problem for Macron is that he always seems to be going after the little guy, imposing austerity measures, scaling back public services, and raising gasoline taxes – while showering tax cuts on businesses and the affluent.
But he thought none of that mattered. He thought the French public (like himself) would have more fear of the Far Right and vote with him. After the first round (last week), he was wrong. The Far Right won 1/3 of the vote. This Sunday (the second and final round) we’ll see if they gain the majority, forcing Macros to “co-habitate” with the Far Right.
But in the U.S. we are actually witnessing the most dangerous of this hubris. U.S. President Joe Biden had envisioned himself as a temporary steward of a Democratic Party that was nurturing a new and more diverse generation of leaders. “I view myself as a bridge, not as anything else” he had said.
But as Trump steamrolled through all Republican opposition to the 2024 nomination, Biden took the position that only he could stop him. Last December he said “If Trump wasn’t running, I’m not sure I’d be running”. When asked a few months ago if he ever considered stepping aside due to his age, he replied, “No, I didn’t”.
And there is an eerie resemblance to Biden’s decision to run for re-election at his age and in his mental condition to that of Franklin Roosevelt to run for re-election in 1944.
To paraphrase an old Richard Pryor joke, “Who are you going to believe? Me, or your own lying eyes?”
Since the presidential debate last week (and I use the word “debate” loosely 🤦♂️), the leaders of the Democratic Party, in full 5-alarm fire mode, want us to believe we didn’t see what we saw.
“It was just a cold.”
“Everybody has an off night.”
“Ok, so it wasn’t his best performance.”
“All presidents have one bad debate.”
“You’re not going to judge 52 years of public service by 90 minutes of a lousy debate, are you?”
“He’s 81! What do you expect? You’ll be 81 someday!”
“He’s not a quitter. He’s all in. This is Scranton Joe we’re talkin’ about!”
“Yeah. Sure. The debate was a disaster. So what?”
These answers are all bullshit. We all saw and we heard the disastrous performance no matter what the Party hacks keep telling us. It was heartbreaking. It was truly, without equivocation, unlike anything any of us had ever seen. No matter where you stand on the Joe Biden scale, from “Joe the Working Class Hero” to “Joe the Banker of Palestinian Ethnic Cleansing”, one thing was certain: this was not a cold.
This was a human being in utter collapse. Not just political collapse, or performance collapse, but rather a full frontal lobe meltdown. Look, he’s 81 years old. Cognitive decline happens, will happen.
This DOES NOT take away his 3 years of being the most progressive President of my lifetime. There has been more action taken, through executive orders and legislation, to protect the environment, more serious funding to lift millions out of poverty, more support for labor unions, libraries, single mothers and college students deep in debt.
But this guy will have another mini stroke in the next few months (he’s probably had one or two already) and then, sadly, the decline will not be reversed. Best to make a plan now and not wait until October. This is not about whether he’s fit to serve another 4 years — this is about whether he should serve another 4 days in the toughest job in the world. That’s the question we should be asking. If he offered to drive you from D.C. to Baltimore tonight, would you get in the car?
I’m not a doctor. I could be (and hopefully am) wrong about all this. But I do have eyes. They don’t lie. I, like nearly every one of you, had (or currently have) four grandparents and two parents (some of you have even more, with wonderful step-parents and step-grandparents). And if you yourself are over the age of 40, your eyes have seen it, too. The slow decline of your elders, followed by a sudden incident or event and then, without warning, your loved one is confused, not sure where he or she is at, can’t find the keys, can’t find the rest of the thought she just had, or the ability to even end the sentence he was in the middle of.
It’s all quite normal and to be expected — and it will visit all of us one day. It won’t feel good. It won’t look pretty. But more than likely, that feeble, humbling moment will not be televised LIVE to an audience of 2 billion people around the world.
Biden is not well. Biden does not possess the faculties he needs. A White House press team cocoon protects him – and lies to us.
Leave Mr. Biden alone. Let him rest. Let him go home. He has done his job. Let him have his dignity. Do him this favor.
But his story reminds me of FDR.
Franklin Roosevelt and the Decision to Run in 1944
ABOVE: FDR at Yalta, February 1945. One of the reasons you don’t see many pictures of Roosevelt from 1944 and 1945 is precisely because he was very ill and he often looked so haggard that few were released. These were times when White House teams could control information to a very high degree.
In 1944 Franklin Roosevelt, though he was only 62, was in terrible physical condition. In an era where blood pressure could not be controlled, decades of sedentary living (not his fault obviously) had combined with a love of tobacco and alcohol to bring on increasing heart failure. He was growing weaker and weaker and his blood pressure regularly soared to dangerous levels. When he flew (which he did rarely) the plane was ordered to stay at low altitudes to put as little strain as possible on his heart. Noted Doris Goodwin in one of her histories on FDR:
He also could barely work for weeks at a time and his heart was failing. In April 1944, for instance, Roosevelt was forced to take a full month off and seemed incapable of almost all work. He headed down to the remote South Carolina estate, named Hobcaw Barony, of Bernard Baruch. There, Roosevelt slept twelve hours a day, worked for maybe an hour, and spent the rest of the time resting. All of this was hidden from the public view, as Roosevelt could be kept out of the sight of the press, protected by Hobcaw’s thousands of remote acres.
However in the case of Yalta, pictures needed to be released, which resulted in this famous shot:
However even in this stage managed case, Roosevelt looked terrible. Also note that he is still smoking away.
The truth of the matter, as Roosevelt’s doctors well knew (and which Roosevelt himself clearly sensed at times), was that Roosevelt was dying and his condition started deteriorating in early 1944. Indeed one of the most well-known heart doctor’s of the era, Frank Lahey, was brought in to examine the president, discovered how ill Roosevelt was, and was appalled. Lahey wrote a memorandum so that he could put it on the record that Roosevelt would not live out a second term.
What exactly Roosevelt knew is still unclear. Memories and diaries of his staffers say he both knew that he was dying and at the same time could will himself not to believe it. He was aware that he was weakening considerably, that he could not work for long periods.
And yet staffers said he believed that he was the only man who could keep the world together. Roosevelt was convinced that only he as an individual could work with Stalin, Churchill and Chiang Kai-Shek to create the new world of peace and prosperity that he so desperately wanted.
William Leahy, FDR’s chief of staff, said FDR also believed as long as he remained president, he really would not die. That having the office would provide him the focus and energy he needed to keep going.
Note to readers: much of this comes from a biography of William Leahy, plus Phillip Stevens’ upcoming book about Roosevelt as a grand strategist in World War II vis-a-vis grand strategists today in matters like Russia, Ukraine, Korea, Gaza, etc.
Leahy was always hovering around Roosevelt protectively. In the black & white photo above, that is Leahy on FDR’s right, and in the color shot, he is right behind the president. He was a high-ranking naval officer, hence the uniform.
Regardless, the situation was terrible, Roosevelt was weak, dying and should not have run for re-election.
But of course he did. And not only did he run for re-election, he changed his running mate in 1944, from Henry Wallace to Harry Truman. This was considered a smart political choice (Truman was on the center/right of the Democratic Party, to which Roosevelt wanted to appeal), but it was potentially catastrophic internationally. Roosevelt didn’t know Truman, didn’t want to spend time with him, and certainly didn’t want Truman to know his plans for the future. The Manhattan Project was kept so secure that not even Truman knew any details of the atomic bomb program until after Roosevelt’s death on April 12, 1945.
In other words, as FDR was dying and running for re-election, Roosevelt changed vice presidents to someone who was entirely ignorant of his plans and to someone who Roosevelt went to no effort to prepare for the presidency. There is a real whiff of après moi le déluge in FDR’s behavior.
It is considered one of the most selfish and potentially disastrous decisions in U.S. history. In the end, Truman rose to the moment (no thanks to Roosevelt) after Roosevelt died.
Still, history was different because of Roosevelt’s recklessness. Truman ended up having to make decisions on the use of the Atom Bomb, on the origins of the Cold War, and on decisions on China – not having any idea what Roosevelt was thinking on these matters. Truman arguably chose differently than Roosevelt according to FDR staffers – though having no idea what Roosevelt really thought, that was hardly a surprise.
In Roosevelt’s case, however, the decision did not impact the election results. The public did not know how sick the president was, the few campaigning events he did were so carefully stage managed that people were led to believe things were ok, and in the end Roosevelt was re-elected comfortably.
Even had Roosevelt lost, however, it would not have been a catastrophe for the country, as his Republican opponent, Thomas Dewey, governor of New York, was not a threat to the future of U.S. democracy. Moreover, the election was not as close as the one today.
But the U.S. presidency is not something you hold onto out of hubris. And I think Biden’s condition is nearly as calamitous as that of Roosevelt in 1944.
This is the same for Trump. He is clearly in mental decline. But the reason that this is not an issue is that his supporters do not care. And the Far Right Power Elite needs Trump. He is a stalking horse for them to achieve their agenda, the destruction of America. And Trump does not really care about the country or his supporters – he just uses them for personal aggrandizement and enrichment.
The problem with Biden’s decision in comparison to Roosevelt’s is that Biden was already in significant trouble before the debate (he does not have the public strength FDR had in 1944). And even though a lot of people are saying the debate won’t matter, it does seem to be having an impact on the small number of swing voters who will decide things in the end. These undecided swing voters are more worried about Biden’s decline than Trump’s decline.
But the length of time until the convention and the election also means that the Democrats have more than enough time to replace him. Just for the record, up through May 1944, Roosevelt was still speaking with his inner circle as if he was unsure whether he would run again. It was only in June/July 1944 that he decided definitely that he would run.
So Biden’s gamble in staying in the race is far more risky than Roosevelt’s.
First, Biden’s performance is going to make his likelihood of losing higher – in Roosevelt’s case it made no difference.
Second, if Biden does lose, its far worse for the United States and the world than if Roosevelt had lost.
It is a huge risk, and I don’t believe Biden should take it.
