Questions about Biden’s decline are a Democratic problem and a U.S. tradition | Opinion

On March 7, 2024, President Joe Biden stood before the nation and delivered what would be his final State of the Union. He was so effective, his voice so clear and strong, a bevy of Fox News personalities and Republicans believed he had been given a stimulant before the speech.

They had spent most of Biden’s term highlighting his every stumble, priming their audience for a major Biden fall that didn’t happen. Because Biden shined, the Democrat’s detractors went the conspiracy theory route instead, insisting he could not have pulled off what he had naturally.

Fox News prime-time host Sean Hannity began referring to him as “Jacked up Joe.”

“I believe they gave him something to help him sustain the lights and sustain the vigor that he had,” Rep. Greg Murphy, a North Carolina Republican and a urologist, told Fox News.

The Associated Press called Biden “defiant” and “scrappy” and wrote that he was “reveling in the political moment.” The public was equally impressed, according to instant polls from CNN.

But 112 days later, Biden had such a disastrous presidential debate against Republican Donald Trump that top Democratic Party officials began to call, quietly then loudly, for him to step down from the ticket, a move many Democratic voters had long wanted. They did not believe he could campaign effectively enough to beat Trump, and worried that the public had too many doubts about his age.

Two weeks later, Biden was no longer the Democratic nominee, handing the reins to Vice President Kamala Harris.

Since then, there’s been speculation about whether the Democratic Party conspired to cover up Biden’s alleged cognitive decline. A new book by journalists Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson, “Original Sin,” includes excerpts from 200 interviews with Democratic insiders. Some said they had seen clear signs of Biden’s cognitive decline — but only admitted that after the election. During the campaign, some of them had said Biden was fit enough to serve again.

Earlier in 2024, Biden’s campaign released results from a medical exam that showed no physical health worries and said his doctors determined a cognitive test was not necessary.

Biden was recently diagnosed with an aggressive form of prostate cancer, underscoring just how difficult it is for the best medical professionals to diagnose a person’s health and predict how different it might be just months later. It’s even harder for the rest of us to get it right.

The authors of “Original Sin” claim Biden did not recognize South Carolina’s Jamie Harrison, who chaired the Democratic National Committee through the Biden era, during a 2023 event.

Harrison says that’s flatly untrue.

Rep. James Clyburn, South Carolina’s most-powerful Democrat, says he saw no signs of cognitive decline in Biden.

Democratic insiders are split. That’s likely always going to be true. The problem is that many of those who had private doubts did not provide the public enough information to judge for ourselves beyond periodic stumbles we saw on TV. That’s the real scandal, no matter if Harrison and Clyburn are right, or the insiders who thought Biden was unfit are. We’ve created a system that incentivizes loyalty to party and politicians more than loyalty to country.

It’s not just a Democratic problem; it’s an American tradition. Family members still disagree on the state of Republican President Ronald Reagan’s cognitive health while he was in office. And in South Carolina, Sen. Strom Thurmond’s fellow Republicans said he was fit at the age of 98 no matter how confused he got or how much he resembled a walking corpse during his final years in the Senate.

“I just talked to him, and he’s got a better grip on reality than most people,” Henry McMaster, then-chair of the state Republican Party and now the current governor, told The New York Times in 2001, two years before Thurmond died at age 100.

Biden insiders believed he had earned the right to go out on his own terms, but they had it precisely backwards. Voters owe nothing to the people we elect. The people we elect owe us.

When they don’t tell us the full truth — about their health, policy or intentions — it’s a betrayal. And we need to start treating it as such, no matter who’s in office.