Presidential families must cease enabling mentally degraded members from seeking, serving the presidency

 Presidential families must cease enabling mentally degraded members from seeking, serving the presidency

At 77 and a half, Joe Biden should not have sought the presidency in 2020. He was clearly slowing down mentally and physically from the vigorous young man first elected to public office half a century earlier.

And he knew it. Biden hinted he’d be a one term president if elected, saying he’d be a transitional leader who would make way to a new generation of Democratic leaders.

But like virtually all aging US leaders, Biden fell under the spell of the power and glory of high office. He couldn’t resist the allure of the presidency, arguing in his last year he had to ‘finish the job’ of ‘great things’ he’d accomplished till then. When he decided to seek reelection, all viable younger contenders dropped out.

But it was not only Biden who succumbed to the hubris of presidential power, it was the entire Biden family who did nothing to dissuade him from stepping down in this 82nd year.

Led by wife Jill, the Bidens enthusiastically pushed him forward tho he’d be 86 at the end of term two…in the unlikely even he’d survive that long managing the most grueling job on the planet.

Biden, Democratic leaders, and especially his family were tragically wrong. Biden’s first term decline accelerated in year four largely out of public scrutiny tho everyone around him knew it. But they kept silent and kept up the charade.

Biden’s private decline as revealed publicly at the June 27, 2024 debate when a clearly befuddled Biden self destructed before America. The curtain protecting his decline fell and his candidacy was quickly cancelled, not by his family, but an intervention by Democratic leaders who dropped the charade to to the noble thing.

Alas, it spelled electoral disaster for Democrats as it was too late to hold a nominating process to select a competitive candidate. That represented both personal shame for the Biden family and their senseless betrayal of responsible political conduct.

Astoundingly, Biden’s opponent Donald Trump was also clearly showing signs of mental decline during the campaign. At 78, Trump was noticeably more distracted, disoriented, unintelligible than even the bizarre ravings of 70 year old Trump in the 2016 campaign.

And just like the Biden family cheering on hapless 81 year old Joe, the entire Trump family gloried in the return of the mentally declining patriarch. In the Trump family case, it likely had nothing to do with propping up an aging, debilitated Trump to continue a successful administration. It was simply about Trump accelerating the apparatus of government to perpetuate the greatest grift of wealth for the Trump family ever perpetrated upon the electorate by a decrepit, aging ruler.

The Democratic intervention with Biden worked, preventing a mentally unfit Biden from continuing to campaign.

But the power hungry Republican Party has no moral spine about allowing mentally degraded octogenarian Trump, mired in a senseless war he no longer even cares about, to wreak havoc on the world stage. The GOP remains oblivious the world economy is at risk as long as Trump remains in office.

The Trump family has enough billions to last generations. But even they lose if the entire system collapses. They must hold an intervention and force the patriarch from office without delay. His successor may have enough sense to fend off the coming collapse.

One election, two candidates. Both too old, too mentally challenged to hold arguably the most difficult job in America, if not the world. Two families, one which refused to intervene on behalf of the American people, one which still has the opportunity. Tho not likely, the Trumps should count the billions they scarfed up and cease allowing a very sick family member continue to govern.

For selfish reasons the Bidens and Trumps engaged in elder abuse. Sadly, the abuse spilled out to tarnish all of America.

Walt Zlotow West Suburban Peace Coalition Glen Ellyn IL