A news story only goes so far;
only so much “digging” is possible against a pressing deadline. Moreover, we
humans are not particularly good at “connecting the dots” when they are far
afield. Through natural selection in an environment in which humans were prey
as well as hunters, we are still “hard-wired” to privilege the immediate. So it
takes more than a bit of effort to counter this natural predilection in order
to make a truly informed judgment that takes into account the relevant
tributaries. One such judgment concerns the impact of U.S. President Joe Biden’s
age on his fitness to serve a second term.
I submit that after the presidential
debate in June, 2024, the American media did not adequately distinguish the
issue being how fit the president would be in the future, during a
second term, from how he was at the time of the debate (and whether the issue
was episodic or of a continuing and gradually worsening condition—the White
House had a vested interest in promoting the former over the latter). Even in
this respect, the human orientation to the immediate is evident. How the
president did a few well-orchestrated appearances in the wake of the debate is
relevant if the issue were episodic—one of a bad performance—and the press by in
large accepted this paradigm at the expense of asking how the president would
be in two or three years—the second term not beginning for six months! Whether
the president would be fit in terms of old-age to serve a second term is also not
the same as whether he could win the election, yet the media was satisfied to
let the latter be the pivotal issue given the political interests of Democrats
running for office. The issue concerning the president’s age was how he would
be in two or three years, not whether he should immediately resign or whether
he could win the election. Both in focusing on particular “performances” and on
the political question of whether Biden could win the election, the
media was enabling rather than countering the common propensity to privilege
the immediacy over the eventual. This orientation to furnishing information to the
voters is not conducive to good electoral judgment by any electorate.
Taking the issue to be the
president’s likely future fitness to serve a second term, Americans’
horizon could have been deepened in at least two respects. That is,
Americans could go beyond their media to consider two additional things.
First, with President
Biden down with the “covid” virus, rather than looking for immediate symptoms,
people could have recalled that Queen Elizabeth survived the illness itself
only to die a year or so after it. After she had recovered from the illness
itself, she admitted to two visitors that it had been bad, so it is reasonable
to suppose that her death a year or so later came as a result. Given the
long-term impact of the virus on organs such as the heart, it is possible that
for the elderly who survive the onset of the virus, the life-threatening aspect
may kick in a year or two later from a weakened heart muscle. If so, the
implications for Biden being able to serve a complete second term should
not be ignored or passed over in favor of looking for immediate symptoms. It
bears remembering that President Wilson was severely impacted by at least one
stroke during his second term, and the White House kept this from the American
people. In 2024 just after the June debate, even members of the political elite
were angry because Biden’s handlers had kept even just his decline a secret. Perhaps
a few news stories on Wilson’s second term could have nudged the electorate in considering
what Biden’s handlers might do during a second term.
Second, even in the midst of public
discourse on President Biden’s health and age, the media, with the exception of
one article by The Washington Post, did not mention that he had had two
brain operations for aneurysms in 1988. Although he fully recovered, how or whether
the surgeries themselves or the aneurysms could have a negative impact his elderly
brain was worth asking following the debate. In short, rather than merely
looking at the president’s immediate health, a longer, longitudinal
perspective would have been useful, especially as the issue was the impact of
old-age on the president’s brain in particular and the surgery had been on his
brain.
As to why the media did not
include these considerations, the focus on the immediate that is engrained in
human nature served not only journalists under pressure to put out a story
before a deadline, but also politicians whose political survival instinct to be
elected (or re-elected). Whether President Biden could win came to include
whether he would take the U.S. House down with him—meaning that the legislative
chamber would continue to have a Republican majority. Subjecting Biden’s
immediate covid symptoms to coverage and juxtapositioning his slightly
increased lethargy with a triumphant Trump at the Republican Convention fit
that narrative and the buttressing political interests of the moment. In contrast,
whether the covid virus could leave its mark on the president not immediately,
but in a year or two, such that he might be more likely to die in his second
term did not fit and was thus ignored by journalists and the political elite alike.
Whether from collusion or coincident interests, the impact was the same. Up
against the human tendency to privilege the immediate and political interests
hinging on the 2024 election, the question of whether the president could
viably serve a full second term quietly dissipated. Did anyone notice? I doubt it; the shift was so subtle, and of
course in line with our human, all too human propensity to focus on the more
immediate.
For the profound thinkers on democracy, a few broader tasks can be suggested to ponder. First, given the human propensity to focus on the immediate, do journalists and media companies have a responsibility to compensate by emphasizing longer-term factors that are relevant to an electorate’s judgment in an upcoming election? If so, should such responsibility be waived if viewers (or readers) simply do not want the less titillating material to be included in the news stories? Against pressure from advertisers, any such responsibility would likely be quickly flailed against the nearest wall without any hindrance from conscience. Second, like the six-year term of U.S. Senators, are there any other structural elements that could be added to the U.S. political system that would counter the hegemony of immediacy in preference to the long-term? Rather than extending the terms of senators even more, or extending the terms of any other elected representative at the federal level, how can the electoral process or system be altered in ways that provide more space for long-term considerations by an electorate? It may be that instituting maximum and not just minimum age qualifications would help, but such a quick fix ought not to relegate the value in analyzing systemic elements of the electoral and governmental systems in terms of whether they lean us toward the immediate. If so, could structural reforms be “invented” that tilt either or both systems to favor medium- and long-term considerations? That the U.S. debt had by 2024 increased to an astronomical figure of nearly $35 trillion—perhaps already a de facto default—suggests that the systems were aligned in favor of the human propensity to emphasize instant gratification over the long-term viability of a republic (or a republic of republics, as in the cases of the U.S. and E.U.).
