Joe Biden’s bizarre withdrawal from his re-election campaign, as a purely historical presidential political matter, is not really groundbreaking.

Yet Joe Biden has the singular distinction in American history — an erstwhile striver for a second term — as not only politically hobbled, but more significantly, cognitively and physically disabled.

Thoroughly unable to communicate, to reason, to remember, to stay focused, to command for hours a 360-degree sweep of a room with dozens of disparate voices, to stay alert, be quick and deliberate, make rapid judgments under extreme stress, to display stamina and endurance, carry on a meaningful and competent dialogue for hours without prompts or cue cards, to stay awake and walk unaided for just a quarter-mile, zombie Joe is not a caricature.  If only he were an A.I. hologram.

Those of us at a certain age remember LBJ’s March 31, 1968 prime-time address to the nation, announcing that “with a heavy heart ...I will neither seek, nor accept the nomination from my party for another term as your president.”

LBJ’s withdrawal from the re-election bid wasn’t due to infirmity or disease.  LBJ was simply mired in deep political unpopularity, stuck in the disastrous Vietnam war, neither winnable nor from which the nation could easily extract itself.

John Tyler, as William Henry Harrison’s vice president, acceded to the presidency upon Harrison’s death from pneumonia, only a month after Harrison’s inauguration.  But Tyler’s bid for an elected full term was derailed by Whig party internecine open warfare, where Tyler was expelled from his own party.

James Polk declined to run for a second term, keeping to his campaign promise when he was first inaugurated in 1845.  While in poor health at the end of his first and only term, Polk’s tenure was extraordinarily successful, and he could have easily been re-elected.

James Buchanan pledged in 1856 before his initial presidential term not to seek a second term.  His tenure was a disaster, directly leading to the Civil War.  He would have had no chance in being nominated if he had decided to run again.

Rutherford B. Hayes, president in 1877–1881, in 1876 also promised if elected not to run for a second term.

Calvin Coolidge, popular enough to have easily won re-election in 1928, just said his tenure was long enough and thus chose to quietly retire.

Truman’s re-election bid for a third term was upended by losing the New Hampshire primary amid rock-bottom popularity, beset by a looming recession, disastrous wage and price controls, and the Korean War stalemate.  He terminated his re-election campaign, supporting Adlai Stevenson instead.

Thus Tyler, Truman, and LBJ were the only presidents who dropped out from seeking another term purely due to unrecoverable political unpopularity.  None of these three, nor any others, declined a second term due to mental or physical disability.

Indeed, Joe’s personal and political unfavorable ratings presaged a bell-tolling dirge, joining Tyler, Truman, and LBJ.  But Joe Biden’s real notorious storyline is entirely novel.

What is most astonishingly damning and unprecedented is that Biden’s steeply and rapidly declining infirmity, and wholesale erosion of cognitive capacity — obvious to at least half of Americans paying even glancing attention — has been known by Democrat party operatives inside the White House, throughout the Executive Branch, and in the Senate and the House since Biden was inaugurated in 2021 — all accompanied by an orchestrated media cover-up eclipsing those pernicious concealments of Woodrow Wilson’s and FDR’s disabilities.

Perhaps equally breathtaking is the ease with which Republicans acquiesced, cooperated, and facilitated the greatest fraud ever foisted upon the American electorate.

Who shall be held to account for the Joe Biden hologram deceiving a nation?  No one.  Why?  Because half of all Americans don’t know or don’t care that they’ve been had, happy to live in a bubble of illusions, where discerning the truth is hard and disagreeable, whereas embracing deceptions is easy and noble.

Image: The White House via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 3.0 US.