The Biden Rule: ‘No Men Need Apply!’
There is a real possibility that, this coming week, Joe Biden will be selecting the 47th president of the United States.
For the woman Biden picks — he has promised to exclude from consideration all men, black, brown, white or Asian — has a better chance of succeeding to the presidency than any vice presidential nominee in U.S. history, other than perhaps Harry Truman.
In 1944, the Democratic establishment engineered the dumping of radical Henry Wallace from Roosevelt’s ticket. They could see from FDR’S physical deterioration that he would not last through a full fourth term.
There are other reasons the woman Biden chooses in August may become our 47th president.
If Biden wins, he will be 78 when he takes the oath, older than our eldest president, Ronald Reagan, was when he left office after two terms. Biden would turn 80 even before he reached the midpoint of his first term.
Moreover, Biden has suffered a transparent deterioration of his mental capacities that was nowhere evident when he debated Mitt Romney’s running mate Paul Ryan in 2012. What are the odds that Biden would serve a full term? Of our 45 presidents, nine failed to complete the term to which they had been elected. One resigned; four died in office; and four were assassinated. All nine were succeeded by their vice president.
John Tyler became president in 1841 when William Henry Harrison died a month into office of pneumonia, following an inaugural address of nearly two hours in the cold without an overcoat.
Tyler would effect the annexation of the Republic of Texas in his final days in 1845, fail to win his party’s nomination to a full term, back the secession of Virginia in 1861, and end his days as a member of the Confederate Congress sitting in Richmond in 1862.
Mexican War hero and President Zachary Taylor died in his second year in 1850, to be succeeded by Millard Fillmore, who would go on to become the 1856 nominee of the anticatholic, anti-immigrant American Party known to history as the “Know Nothings.”
Andrew Johnson became president after the assassination of Lincoln at Ford’s Theater a month after Lincoln’s second inaugural.
Johnson would be impeached in 1868 by radical Republicans who wanted a more severe Reconstruction of a defeated and occupied South.
Chester Arthur succeeded James Garfield in 1881 after President Garfield suffered a mortal wound from an assassin’s bullet at a D.C. train station, only months into his first year in office.
Teddy Roosevelt became our youngest president in 1901 when he succeeded the assassinated William Mckinley. In our own time, Lyndon Johnson succeeded John F. Kennedy after Dallas in November 1963.
In addition to Tyler, Fillmore, Andrew Johnson, Arthur, TR and LBJ, three vice presidents succeeded to the presidency in the 20th century on the death or departure of the men who selected them: Calvin Coolidge on the death of Warren Harding in 1923, Harry Truman on the death of FDR in April 1945, and Gerald Ford on the resignation of Richard Nixon.
Thus, of our four dozen vice presidents, all of whom have been white men, nine have risen to the nation’s highest office to fill out a term of the president who selected him.
Yet, with the pandemic crisis, the economic crisis and the racial crisis gripping the nation, what are the unique conditions Biden has set down for the person he would put a heartbeat away from the presidency?
Biden began his selection process by eliminating and discriminating against whole categories of people.
First, no white men need apply. Second, no man of any race, color or creed will be considered. Gender rules them out, though every vice president for 230 years has been a man. Nevertheless, says Biden, this one has to be a woman.
“No men need apply!” automatically eliminated 17 of the 24 Democratic governors who are men, including Andrew Cuomo of New York and Gavin Newsom of California, and it eliminated 30 of the 47 Democratic members of the Senate who are men.
In the aftermath of the George Floyd killing and protests, pressure has grown on Biden not only to choose a woman but a woman of color, and preferably a Black woman. If that were a criterion, it would eliminate all but a tiny few of the party’s senators and governors.
What national interest impelled Biden to so restrict the pool of talent from which a possible presidential successor would be chosen?
Joe Biden would be the oldest man ever to serve as president. He would enter office with visibly diminished mental capacities. And he has decided to restrict his choice as to who should inherit our highest office by ruling out the vast majority of the most able and experienced leaders of his own Democratic Party.
Is this any way to select someone who could, in a heartbeat, take control of the destiny of the world’s most powerful nation?
Whatever happened to Jimmy Carter’s “Why Not the Best?”
2-year-old drowns in Mississippi pond
ESCATAWPA — A 2-year-old boy who wandered away from his home was later found dead by relatives in a nearby pond, authorities said.
The incident happened in the community of Escatawpa about 11 a.m. on Wednesday, Jackson County Sheriff Mike Ezell told news outlets.
By the time medical personnel and deputies arrived, the boy was unresponsive. He was transported to Singing River Hospital, where he was pronounced dead, Ezell said.
An investigation is ongoing, Ezell said. Foul play is not suspected and no charges have been filed in the case, he said.
Man charged in MS shooting of federal task force officer
GULFPORT — A man accused of shooting a federal task force member who was trying to execute a search warrant in Mississippi has been indicted on nine charges, federal prosecutors said Thursday.
Joseph D. Sonnier, 31, of Gautier, Mississippi, faces four counts of assault on a federal officer or employee of the government, four counts of discharging a firearm in connection with a violent crime and one count of being a felon in possession of a firearm, U.S. Attorney Mike Hurst and FBI Special Agent in Charge Michelle Sutphin said in a news release.
Sonnier’s initial appearance before U.S. Magistrate Judge John Gargiulo in Gulfport is scheduled Aug. 6.
Authorities said Sonnier, on July 21, shot at a member of the U.S. Marshals Service Task Force outside a hotel in Gautier, hitting him in the neck. The agent, whose name was not disclosed, was treated at a nearby hospital for his injury and later released.
At the time of his arrest, Sonnier was wanted in Hancock County for two counts of kidnapping, two counts of aggravated assault, armed robbery and possession of a weapon by a convicted felon, The Sun Herald reported.
If convicted on the new charges, Sonnier faces up to 20 years in prison on each count of assaulting a federal officer, up to 10 years for being a felon in possession of a firearm and 10 years on each count of discharging a firearm in connection with a violent crime.
Mississippi police: Disappearance of trucker ‘suspicious’
GAUTIER — Authorities are calling the disappearance of a truck driver in Mississippi “really suspicious” after his 18-wheeler was found abandoned at a rest stop.
Dimitri Rai Williams, 47, was last seen parking the truck at the highway stop in Gautier early Monday, Interim Police Chief Danny Selover told news outlets Wednesday.
Williams was spotted getting out of the tractor-trailer and into the passenger side of a black SUV that had been following him, investigators said.
Williams was traveling from California to Georgia to make a delivery, and his employer said he often checked in during his routes, according to officials. The company used GPS to track the truck after he failed to make contact, authorities said.
Police recovered Williams’ cellphone, but declined to say where it was found, The Biloxi Sun Herald reported.
“It’s very unusual for him,” the newspaper quoted Selover as saying. “Nobody has heard from him. He hasn’t called his wife or anything . ... It’s really suspicious.”
4 special judges appointed to Mississippi courts
JACKSON — Four special judges have been appointed in Mississippi to handle a backlog of cases caused by the coronavirus pandemic.
Mississippi Supreme Court Justice Mike Randolph said the judges will help out at the Hinds Chancery Court and Hinds County Court, both in Jackson.
Randolph said more special judges are expected to be appointed to temporarily assist judges in districts statewide. It is estimated that as many as 30,000 cases have been postponed as a result of COVID-19, he said.
Retired Hinds County Chancery Judges Patricia D. Wise of Jackson and William H. Singletary of Clinton were appointed to assist the four chancellors of the Hinds Chancery Court. Jurist in Residence John N. Hudson of Natchez will help recently appointed Hinds County Court Judge Carlyn M. Hicks in Youth Court and former Hinds County Court Judge James D. Bell of Jackson was appointed to assist Hinds County Court Judge Larita Cooper-stokes.
Special judges will be paid with $2.5 million in funds provided by the CARES Act and are available through Dec. 30.