In 1932, when Franklin Delano Roosevelt first ran for the US presidency, he was paralyzed from the waist down. In fact, he had been paralyzed since 1922, before he even became governor of New York (1929-1932). When he ran for the third presidency in 1940, many members of the Democratic Party whispered their objections because of his deteriorating health. In 1944, when he won the election for the fourth time, he was dying. Americans were stunned to learn on April 12, 1945 that their president had died. He was only 63 years old, but the state of his health was known only in Washington. Most Americans didn’t even know he was paralyzed by polio. No one – neither a political opponent nor a journalist – has ever spoken publicly about his health.
Today, after the explosive growth of the mass media and the more explosive diffusion of social networks, no one pays attention to what the president of the United States, Joe Biden, says. Everyone stands by how he says it. Journalists, political opponents, actors, leaders of allied countries are with a notebook in hand, counting the phrasal mistakes of “old-Joe”. He may at some point declare World War III, and all we will notice is that before saying the word “Third” he hesitated, because – apparently – he did not remember how many had been previously.
The above is not an exercise in nostalgia for the “good old days”, when citizens were poorly informed. In any case, “the goodness of the old days is due to a bad memory”. Many studies have shown that the ill health of leaders can have disastrous results, regardless of whether Franklin Roosevelt changed America and the world for the better. He brought the American economy out of the interwar Great Depression, he was a key factor in the defeat of Nazi and Japanese totalitarianism. Respecting the proportions, respectively, are the results of the four-year term of Biden, although Russian revisionism has not yet been defeated. Therefore, while the health of leaders should be an issue, we should be concerned if it is the only issue.
In reality, however, it will be good (for the Democrats, the USA and the world) for Joe Biden to retire. Not for health reasons, but for the fact that the reason for his health dominated. There are many problems in the Western world, which the next administration of Donald Trump is likely to worsen. It is time to discuss these instead of counting the slips of the tongue of a politician who has given a lot and we will never know how much more he could give.
