Joe Biden: Democratic fighter, now battling cancer

WASHINGTON – Mr Joe Biden lost his eldest son Beau to brain cancer in 2015 – a loss so great that he has repeatedly talked about it over the years.

Now, the 82-year-old former president – who faced scrutiny over his mental acuity while in office, before ceding the White House to Mr Donald Trump – is

facing his own cancer battle.

His office announced on May 18 that he was diagnosed with an “aggressive” form of prostate cancer, with “metastasis to the bone”, adding that he was reviewing his treatment options.

Mr Biden wanted to go down in history as the man who saved America from Mr Trump, by winning the 2020 presidential election and ousting the Republican.

He steered a divided country out of the Covid-19 pandemic and the chaos of Mr Trump’s first four years, before pushing through an impressive raft of legislation.

But Mr Biden’s single term will now be bookended by his rival’s presidencies.

For many, the defining image of the 46th US president will be a haunted-looking Biden lost for words in a disastrous debate against Mr Trump that eventually forced him out of the race in 2024.

His replacement as Democratic candidate,

his vice-president Kamala Harris,

was left with an almost impossible task to prevent Mr Trump’s return – and indeed it proved insurmountable.

Mr Biden has often insisted that he could have beaten his Republican nemesis.

But questions about Mr Biden’s physical and cognitive abilities – and the responses of staff and key Democrats to evident signs of decline – have flared with May 20’s pending release of Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, And His Disastrous Choice To Run Again by CNN journalist Jake Tapper and Mr Alex Thompson of Axios.

And a newly released audio recording of Mr Biden speaking haltingly in October 2023, and struggling to remember facts and dates, has added to the debate.

Historic challenges

Mr Biden’s inauguration in January 2021 was a remarkable comeback for an often underestimated politician who spent a lifetime battling both political odds and personal tragedy.

But he was an unlikely saviour.

Mr Biden – born on Nov 20, 1942 in Pennsylvania – was America’s oldest elected president when he took office, until Mr Trump’s election in 2024.

He is arguably more famous for his gaffes, his decades in the US Senate and being Mr Barack Obama’s vice-president.

Though his single term will be remembered for his appointment of the nation’s first black, south Asian and female vice-president, and his commitment to the Western alliances that Mr Trump trashed, there were irreparable problems.

Get back up

Mr Biden’s popularity suffered an early blow with the chaotic US withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 – and never really recovered. His approval rating was just 36 per cent in a final CNN poll.

His pandemic stimulus sent inflation soaring, part of the reason Americans punished Ms Harris at the polls.

And Mr Biden’s lax border policies led to record crossings of illegal immigrants, which Mr Trump pounced on.

Fond of folksy tales about his upbringing as a child with a stutter from a blue-collar, Irish Catholic background in Pennsylvania, he would often quote his father’s mantra: “When you get knocked down, you get back up.”

He battled through the tragedy of a car crash that killed his wife and baby daughter in 1972, just days after he was elected a US senator at 29 – then rebuilt his life with the help of second wife Jill.

He underwent surgery twice in 1988 for brain aneurysms.

Then there was Beau’s death in 2015, and the drug and legal problems of his younger son Hunter, to whom he controversially issued a pardon as he left office.

In 2023, Mr Biden had a skin lesion – a basal cell carcinoma – removed from his chest. He previously had other non-melanoma skin cancers removed.

But

age was a battle he could not win

.

Mr Trump dubbed Mr Biden “Sleepy Joe” and every stumble – on the stairs of Air Force One, off his bike – was relentlessly replayed on social media.

The White House insisted there was no problem and increasingly shielded Mr Biden from unscripted public appearances – until it was too late.

He had a parting shot for Mr Trump, warning in his farewell speech of a dangerous “oligarchy taking shape in America”. AFP