Editorial: Joe Biden or the bad example of the leader

François Hollande was 62 years old on December ^1, 2016, when he announced that he would not seek a new term at the Élysée Palace. The French president was in excellent physical and mental health, if we put aside the fact that he had completely forgotten that finance was his only adversary or that he did not realize that he was confiding state secrets to two journalists who would later repeat them in a book.

Joe Biden was twenty years older when he finally admitted, reluctantly, that he had to give up his chance to succeed himself in the White House. The octogenarian nonetheless claimed, a sin of vanity, that he was the only one capable of still beating Donald Trump. Above all, he was the only one who believed it. A book on the former American president's neuronal decrepitude is causing a stir in the United States. After a long investigation, its two authors recount how Joe Biden was nothing more than a ghost floating in the Oval Office, incapable, for example, of recognizing his friend and supporter George Clooney. Clooney therefore resigned himself to asking "Who else?"

There's certainly no evidence that Kamala Harris, who had entered the campaign a few weeks earlier, would have won the election. As Robert de Niro astutely points out, Trump wasn't elected by Republicans, but by voters who didn't turn out to vote. Nevertheless, by clinging to his seat tooth and nail, Joe Biden hasn't helped his vice president.

"At the end of a long investigation, its two authors tell how Joe Biden was nothing more than a ghost floating in the Oval Office."

Dictators and autocrats have no problem continuing to rule their countries, or pretending to, like Algeria's Bouteflika. It takes a coup d'état or a palace revolution to dethrone them, and the outcome isn't always better. History shows that in a democracy, too, having the wisdom to abdicate in favor of the general interest, when body and mind have already given up, is not given to everyone.

In Bordeaux, we remember the painful final years of Jacques Chaban-Delmas. His successor, Alain Juppé , had decided not to run again in 2020, obsessed with the famous "one mandate too many." We saw the painful end of Pope Francis's reign, recalling the agony of John Paul II. Benedict XVI remains the only model of a pontiff with the will and courage to say "io mi fermo qui" (I stop there). For his country, the Catholic Biden should have been more Benedict than Francis.