Joe Biden’s exit from American politics was never going to be easy.
After a lifetime in public office that ended with an unprecedented turnaround on whether to seek a second term, the former president has watched his mental acuity increasingly scrutinized and his White House legacy systematically steamrolled by his successor −all this in the four months since he moved out of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
Now the announcement that Biden, 82, has been diagnosed with an aggressive form of prostate cancer, one that has metastasized to the bone, has prompted a surge of sympathy and compassion. But it has also underscored growing questions and, among some top Democrats, anger about his initial decision to run for reelection despite signs of physical frailty and the reality of advanced age.
“So far, so good,” Biden told USA TODAY in January. “But who knows what I’m going to be when I’m 86 years old?”
In the Oval Office interview, he said he still believed that he could have defeated Donald Trump in 2024, as he had in 2020, if he hadn’t pulled out of the contest after a wandering, faltering debate performance last June. His vice president, Kamala Harris, claimed the Democratic nomination but lost the general election.
Among many independent political analysts, though, Biden’s defeat seemed all but guaranteed, given voters’ alarm about inflation and immigration as well as concern about his vigor. Some speculate that an earlier decision not to run again, and the full-scale primary campaign that would have followed, would have allowed some other Democratic candidate to prevail in November.
Now there’s also this debate: Was there was a cover-up to keep the American people from understanding the state of the president’s health?
