We have witnessed history in the making since the presidential debate between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump on June 27, 2024, which was the earliest debate in a presidential campaign in American history.
Never before in American history has a terrible debate performance led to a president withdrawing from a re-election bid.
But that’s just what we have witnessed over the past month. My family learned the news while eating lunch at a restaurant. A quick glance at our phones revealed the headlines about Biden’s departure from the race.
Often looking lost and incoherent, Biden showed that he wasn’t well in that June 27 debate. His best allies and cheerleaders, the mainstream media, immediately turned on him.
“President Biden struggled through his first debate of the 2024 campaign against Donald J. Trump, meandering and mumbling through answers as the former president pressed his case for a second term with limited resistance from his rival,” The New York Times reported.
Finally, after nearly a month of pressure from voices in the mainstream media and Democrat leadership, Biden withdrew from the presidential election on July 21, 2024.
They say that history rhymes. Biden’s decision not to stay is reminiscent of LBJ.
President Lyndon Baines Johnson announced that he wasn’t running for re-election in March 1968.
President Lyndon Baines Johnson announced in March 1968 that he was not running for re-election. Vice President Johnson had become President Johnson immediately following President John F. Kennedy’s assassination in November 1963. Johnson ran and won in 1964. He was eligible to run again in 1968.
Why did Johnson bow out? Like Biden, the mainstream media had turned on him. Veteran CBS news anchor Walter Cronkite had spent two weeks on a fact-finding mission in Vietnam. His February 1968 broadcast made a compelling case that the Vietnam War was unwinnable.
“We’ve been too often disappointed by the optimism of the American leaders both in Washington and in Vietnam to have faith any longer in the silver linings they find in the darkest clouds,” Cronkite declared. The Vietnam War was unwinnable.
Walter Cronkite’s news report about the Vietnam War.
LBJ saw the writing on the wall. “If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost middle America,” he said of Cronkite’s 30-minute broadcast.
“I shall not seek, nor will I accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your president,” Johnson declared in a televised address from the Oval Office on March 31, 1968.
Similar to the past month, which included a failed assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump leading him to say he “took a bullet for democracy”, 1968’s presidential campaign proved historic. LBJ knew that JFK’s charismatic brother, Robert F. Kennedy, was unbeatable.
Within days of Johnson’s campaign exit, civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated on April 4, 1968. Within two months, Democratic presidential candidate Robert Kennedy was assassinated at a campaign stop on June 6. Democrat Vice President Hubert Horatio Humphrey ran and lost against former Republican Vice President Richard Nixon in the general presidential election.
Biden vs. Woodrow Wilson and FDR
President Woodrow Wilson
If Biden were in better health, he would have stayed in the race. For months, and perhaps years, the Biden White House has tried to mask the president’s cognitive decline. Shuffling while he walked and often looking lost, Biden’s non-verbal cues also showed that something was amiss. Despite this, his press secretary denied his decline and called video clips of him “cheap fakes.” Americans saw through the lies and believed their own eyes.
Had President Biden lived in a non-visual and non-instant media age, like Presidents Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt, he might have gotten away with hiding his health.
President Wilson embarked on whistle-stop speaking tour by train in the fall of 1919. Following the treaty that ended World War I, Wilson sought to build support among the American people for a new entity, the League of Nations. Exhausted, Wilson had a stroke on October 2, 1919. The severity of his condition was hidden from the public.
Although newspapers could publish photographs, Wilson lived in a pre-television era. Newsreels were still a novelty. For example, Wilson’s 1913 inauguration had been turned into a short silent film that played in between silent movie reels at theaters, but his presidency’s daily routine was not the subject of weekly newsreels.
In fact, a letter that Wilson wrote trying to give newsreels a lift in the marketplace was made public on Oct. 4, two days after his stroke. After failed, short-lived efforts from 1914 to 1918, the Hearst corporation’s international newsreels finally began playing regularly for movies produced by Universal Studios. These early newsreels were silent films. “Talkies” came to the movies in 1927.
Until the end of Wilson’s presidency in March 1921, his wife Edith worked with his doctor to hide the seriousness of the president’s condition from his cabinet, the press and the American people. Wilson didn’t hold cabinet meetings and Edith made decisions based on her knowledge of her husband’s opinions.
A similar effort took place in 1944 to hide the seriousness of President Franklin Roosevelt’s health as he ran for an unprecedented fourth term. In the spring of 1944 during the grueling days of World War II and the D-Day offensive, President Roosevelt was diagnosed with congenital heart failure. For years, Roosevelt had hidden his use of a wheelchair. He’d suffered paralysis in his legs after contracting polio in 1921. Photographers had agreed to only photograph him from the waist up. In 1944, his doctor knew that he was headed for the grave and hid the news from average Americans and the enemy, Hitler.
President Franklin Roosevelt
Although Roosevelt was the first president to appear on television at a fair in New York, Americans did not have televisions in their homes. The technology was a novelty. Instead, they heard Roosevelt’s rhythmic voice on radio or saw him seated in regular chairs in movie newsreels. Americans began purchasing televisions in the 1950s and by the time John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon debated in 1960 under the bright lights of a TV studio, most Americans owned one television.
Similar to the 1944 and 1968 conventions, the 2024 Democratic convention will take place in Chicago. Because of his health and the demands of World War II, President Roosevelt did not attend the 1944 Democratic convention in Chicago.
“Those close to the President—and even those who saw him speak in public—noted his haggard and weak appearance, his flagging energy, and his increasing lapses of concentration and memory. Most of the American public was unaware of the President's struggles—though rumors about FDR's health often ran wild—and FDR delivered a few key, command performances in 1944 that quieted concerns,” William E. Leuchtenburg wrote in an article for the Miller Center.
At the 1944 Democratic convention, party leaders swapped out Roosevelt’s running mate. They replaced the unpopular liberal, Vice President Henry Wallace, with a midwestern senator, Harry S. Truman of Missouri. The Roosevelt-Truman ticket won a historic fourth term for Roosevelt. They were inaugurated in January 1945,
On April 12, 1945, Roosevelt died of a cerebral hemorrhage. Four months after becoming vice president, Harry Truman became president of the United States. Like Wilson before them, Roosevelt’s family and handlers successfully hid the severity of his health. His death was a shock to the nation.
President Harry Truman
President Biden’s decision to withdraw shows that hiding a president’s declining health is nearly impossible in today’s instant visual culture. Like many Americans, I found out about Biden’s decision through modern technology.
While we were celebrating my husband’s birthday at a restaurant on Sunday, our middle son held up his phone in the middle of lunch and told us that Biden was out. My son was the first one in our family to look at his phone and discover the breaking news.
The news confirmed what I had learned the previous Thursday night from a well-connected Democrat. While serving as a guest commentator on NTD, live in studio in New York, I was on set with a Democrat attorney. Off air, he said that Biden would withdraw on Sunday. His words proved correct.
He also said that Michelle Obama was 90 percent ready to throw her hat in the ring. He explained that campaigning for four months was far more appealing to her than a year’s long presidential campaign. This guest was correct about the timing of Biden’s announcement. We will see if he is correct about Michelle Obama becoming the Democratic nominee.
Thank you for your work giving us specific historical context to today's events.