Bill Cotterell: Biden’s out of the campaign, not the job
Republicans calling for President Joe Biden to resign right away, rather than serving the five months left in his term, know there’s no chance that’s going to happen.
Unless he has some further-disabling health crisis, Biden will be on the steps of the U.S. Capitol to smile and warmly congratulate the nation’s next president in the inauguration ceremonies Jan. 20. It will be a bittersweet end to a political career of more than half a century if the Marine officer with the nuclear codes follows Kamala Harris away from the swearing-in ceremony. And if it’s Donald Trump, Biden will politely pretend everything is all right as he returns the presidency to his predecessor.
But since Biden announced on July 21 that he was abandoning his re-election campaign and endorsing Vice President Harris, Republicans have mischievously called for him to quit right away. Naturally they cloak their unsolicited advice in feigned concern for national security, but they really don’t want to give up the age issue central to the weeks-long pressure campaign that finally forced Biden out.
U.S. Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., even proposed using the 25th Amendment to remove the president. That’s the constitutional provision — adopted after the Kennedy assassination but never used to remove a president — that allows Cabinet officers to evaluate presidential fitness.
“Biden is not capable of fulfilling the requirements of the job, and that poses a threat to our national security,” Scott said in a post on X. “Joe Biden shouldn’t be running our country if he can’t run for re-election.”
Lest anyone think he believes Harris would do better, should a Cabinet mutiny succeed in ousting Biden, Scott recalled that many of his Florida constituents fled socialism in Cuba and South America. “Kamala Harris is a California socialist, plain and simple,” he said in another tweet.
Gov. Ron DeSantis added that Harris “was complicit in a massive coverup to hide and deny the fact that Joe Biden was not capable of discharging the duties of the office.”
There was a loud and fast-spreading chorus of resignation calls from Republicans nationwide, including U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La. The sincerity of their concern for national security should be considered in light of partisan politics — like everything else in an even-numbered year.
With Biden out of the race, the GOP wants to keep talk of his mental and physical decline buzzing in political circles. Every time he trips on the steps of Air Force One, whenever he has a verbal slip, next time he looks confused, Republicans will remind us that Biden is not just an octogenarian, but a very old one.
Their concern for having a president on top of his game probably ranks somewhere below their desire to make fun of him.
Biden won’t quit because people in power don’t give it up. After what Trump did, trying to stay in office, the GOP can hardly talk about graceful exits.
And from a job-performance standpoint, the presidency is really about 25,000 people. Stumbling over a word or needing a nap isn’t going to change domestic policy or world events. When any president slips, there are whole departments to catch whatever slipped past him.
Democrats beat up on George W. Bush for spending seven minutes reading to Sarasota school children after being told of the 9/11 terror attacks. But Bush knew thousands of city, state and federal officials were working on it.
It’s just nasty partisanship to say Biden can’t be president if he can’t run for president. First, he probably didn’t drop out because of his clear physical decline, but because strategists showed him polls proving he can’t win.
Running for office and being in office are two entirely different skill sets. At 81, Biden doesn’t have to be both nominee and chief executive anymore.
Once he benched himself, Democrats were quick to praise Biden for putting the country ahead of his strong personal wishes, which is probably true to some extent. But it’s likely that tactical reality set in and, like Lyndon Johnson in 1968, Biden had to finally admit he would probably lose — and take many congressional Democrats down with him.
To paraphrase another sad ending, the Republicans won’t have Joe Biden to kick around anymore. But they’d like to kick him one last time now that he’s down.
Bill Cotterell is a retired Capitol reporter for United Press International and the Tallahassee Democrat. He writes a weekly column for The News Service of Florida and City & State Florida. He can be reached at wrcott43@aol.com.
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This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: Bill Cotterell: Biden’s out of the campaign, not the job
