Biden and Trump need mental checkups, now. It should become a presidential tradition | Opinion
In 1973, an embattled President Richard Nixon, then facing serious questions about his personal finances, took the extraordinary step to release his personal tax returns.
So began an American political custom that continued for presidents (save Donald Trump) to this day.
“People have got to know whether or not their president is a crook,” said Nixon at the time. The words proved ironic on so many levels, then and now.
It is time for President Joe Biden to have his Nixon moment: Biden must take a cognitive evaluation and release the results. A candidate’s mental state is as fundamentally important as their financial state. And a little professional insight isn’t too much for the American public to expect.
Opinion
The brain is a pretty important part of a president’s body. It deserves a full checkup as well, regardless of age or symptoms. It is, frankly, a black eye to the nation’s culture — replete with our silly taboos — that we haven’t long-insisted a leader capable of destroying the planet is tested just as rigorously as an astronaut.
Biden’s recent mental meltdown debating Trump has led to a self-inflicted campaign crisis that is now dividing Democrats. The president had the perfect moment last Friday to stop the bleeding and completely change the nation’s political conversation. He was about half way through a 22-minute interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, former press secretary for President Bill Clinton, when the inevitable question arose.
Stephanopoulos, politely but firmly, asked: “Would you be willing to undergo an independent medical evaluation that included neurological and cognitive tests and release the results to the American people?”
Biden: “Look. I have a cognitive test every single day. Every day I have that test. Everything I do. You know, not only am I campaigning, but I’m running the world. Not -- and that’s not hy-- sounds like hyperbole, but we are the essential nation of the world.”
Sigh.
Does Joe Biden really think he can avoid a full cognitive evaluation for four more years as a re-elected president and continue hiding from the American people? His performance at the debate last month made this a question for many, unless he ends his re-election campaign.
Biden’s non-answer was the most painful moment of his exchange with Stephanopoulos. The president’s response surely was not spontaneous — it was undoubtedly the result of brainstorming among the deepest inner circle in the White House. Biden clearly does not want a thorough cognitive examination. Yet, if every day as president is a cognitive test, as he says it is, didn’t he flunk it on debate night for all the world to see?
He’s not the only one running for president that could use a look under the hood.
Trump’s debate performance, repeatedly detached from reality, also merits a professional examination as to the origins of his fantasies. Does Trump really think American women have, for years, been clamoring to lose their federal right to reproductive freedom? Does he really believe that abortion advocates want the right to kill babies after they are born? How did he invent the lie that Nancy Pelosi, under siege on Jan. 6 in the Capitol, refused law enforcement help? The list goes on...
If Biden turns out to be merely frail but mentally sound, he has the chance to turn the tables on his formidable adversary. But he does not want to scientifically prove his acuity. He wants us to take it for granted.
That, for many Democrats, is an insult. So the Biden campaign remains in deep trouble.
In this battle of the geriatrics, voters deserve to know whether independent medical examinations have unearthed cognitive issues. Neither candidate seems willing to meet this basic public interest.
If Richard Nixon can face the music, so can Biden. Beginning the tradition of the mental checkup of American presidents is the soundest thing he could possibly do.
