The health of American leaders is a well-kept secret – Technologist

Joe Biden’s political survival is at stake. The 81-year-old president, whose mental fitness was in doubt after his disastrous June 27 debate with Donald Trump, has been forced to put his campaign on hold after testing positive for Covid-19. The diagnosis could not have come at a worse time, as former president Barack Obama, who is still very influential in the Democratic Party, was quoted in the American press as expressing his reservations on Thursday, July 18.

The Washington Post reported that Obama had told people close to him that he thought his former vice president should “seriously evaluate the viability of his candidacy.” Should the information become official, he would be the most prominent Democrat to join the voices urging Biden to step aside. On Thursday, Montana’s Jon Tester became the second Democratic senator to publicly call on the incumbent president to step aside. The Democratic candidate’s campaign team is trying to put an end to speculation, and Biden repeats that only the “Lord Almighty” could convince him to step down.

These doubts have been compounded by the introspection of the press, which admits that it has not questioned the president’s state of health enough, as well as the New York Times‘ revelations about the repeated visits of a Parkinson’s disease specialist to the White House and the indiscretions of his entourage, which deems him to be less and less alert.

The US president keeps reiterating that he is in the best position to win on November 5 against Trump and that nothing will prevent him from fully exercising his functions if he is re-elected. But he stubbornly refuses to let his doctor answer to the press and to undergo any examinations other than those whose results he published in February.

His Republican opponent, four years his junior, has been no more transparent. His latest doctor’s note, published in November, consists of just three paragraphs. It’s not enough to reassure voters who expect their president to be in full possession of their faculties. Many doubt that the two oldest contenders in US history are, but they are under no obligation to prove it. And many of their predecessors were careful to keep quiet about ailments or handicaps that sometimes had serious consequences in the performance of their duties, imposing a sort of omerta. From Woodrow Wilson’s total incapacity to Ronald Reagan’s cognitive problems, from Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s disability to Calvin Coolidge’s depression, the precedents are numerous and sometimes disturbing. Although the long-kept secret of the health of White House occupants has been less so since the presidency of John Fitzgerald Kennedy, nothing compels them to lift the veil.

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