This is not the first time that an invalid has occupied the Oval Office. After apparently exhausting himself in behalf of the “War to Make the World Safe for Democracy” and orchestrating the “peace conference” at Versailles that guaranteed the carnage of WWII, Woodrow Wilson succumbed to a nearly fatal stroke in October 1919 while barnstorming the nation in behalf of the League of Nations Treaty.
As it happened, America was than blessed with a perfectly serviceable Vice-President, Thomas R. Marshall, who had been a famous Midwestern lawyer, governor of Indiana, outspoken “progressive” and contender for the Democrat nomination in 1912.
Wilson won the nomination on the 46th ballot but only after his advisers secretly promised Marshall the vice presidency in a very smoked-filled room in the wee hours of the Dem convention.
Perhaps that is why Marshall’s most famous quote is known to almost everyone more than 100 years later. Thus, observed America’s #2 leader—
“What this country needs is a really good five-cent cigar.”
Notwithstanding Marshall’s status as a second term almost-president, Edith Wilson was having none of a succession plan. And that’s despite the fact she did not have a degree in “education” nor did she answer to the “Dr. Edith” title.
But she had proven herself around Washington as no mean hostess when she slipped into the First Lady role during and/0r after (it’s disputed!) the illness and death of Wilson’s first wife in 1915. Either way, Edith Wilson was not about to disembark from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue solely because her husband was virtually paralyzed on the entire left side of his body.
Indeed, the extent of her intrigues and deceptions designed to hang on to power are now legendary. As medical historian, Howard Markel, has told,
Everything changed on the morning of Oct. 2, 1919. According to some accounts, the president awoke to find his left hand numb to sensation before falling into unconsciousness. In other versions, Wilson had his stroke on the way to the bathroom and fell to the floor with Edith dragging him back into bed. However those events transpired, immediately after the president’s collapse, Mrs. Wilson discretely phoned down to the White House chief usher, Ike Hoover and told him to “please get Dr. Grayson, the president is very sick.”
Grayson quickly arrived. Ten minutes later, he emerged from the presidential bedroom and the doctor’s diagnosis was terrible: “My God, the president is paralyzed,” Grayson declared.
What would surprise most Americans today is how the entire affair, including Wilson’s extended illness and long-term disability, was shrouded in secrecy. In recent years, the discovery of the presidential physicians’ clinical notes at the time of the illness confirm that the president’s stroke left him severely paralyzed on his left side and partially blind in his right eye, along with the emotional maelstroms that accompany any serious, life-threatening illness, but especially one that attacks the brain. Only a few weeks after his stroke, Wilson suffered a urinary tract infection that threatened to kill him. Fortunately, the president’s body was strong enough to fight that infection off but he also experienced another attack of influenza in January of 1920, which further damaged his health.
Protective of both her husband’s reputation and power, Edith shielded Woodrow from interlopers and embarked on a bedside government that essentially excluded Wilson’s staff, the Cabinet and the Congress. During a perfunctory meeting the president held with Sen. Gilbert Hitchcock (D-Neb.) and Albert Fall (R-N.M.) on Dec. 5, Grayson and Edith even tried to hide the extent of Wilson’s paralysis by keeping his left side covered with a blanket.
As it turned out, the immobilization of the presidency during the last 18 months of Wilson’s term was one of history’s great serendipity’s. Absent Wilson’s tireless promotion, the abominable League of Nations Treaty died aborning. America was thus given one more chance to return to its ways as a peaceful Republic untroubled by the petty intrigues of nations beyond the great Atlantic and Pacific Ocean moats.
Needless to say, that reprieve has long since been kicked away. America is now a dangerous Empire and its president is virtually the helmsman of the planet. So the fact that Jill Biden has apparently read and copied the entirety of professor Markel’s account of America’s first Spousal Regency is troubling indeed.
It was evident beyond a shadow of a doubt last Thursday night that a second Spousal Regency is now underway. “Joe Biden” would have received his gold watch from Washington’s grateful ruling apparatchiks long ago, save for the obvious fact that Jill Biden has said that absolutely “nyet means nyet”.
At this point, of course, it would be helpful if Jill did speak a bit of Russian because the minions helping her conduct this unauthorized, unlawful and constitutionally- repugnant Regency have gotten her marooned in what amounts to an helacious Moscow Winter. Alas, however, it appears that her second language lies elsewhere.
That is to say, Jill Jacobs Giacoppo’s tribal ferocity did not originate from the bucolic hills of Willow Grove Pennsylvania or the classrooms of Upper Moreland High School or even the instructors at Brandywine Junior College. Her father’s family had emigrated from the Sicilian village of Gesso, losing the “Giacoppo” part within days of passing Lady Liberty, but hanging on to the blood loyalty part even unto the present fraught hour.
That is to say, Edith Wilson Biden is a clear and present danger to the American Republic. She has spent the last 47 years marinating in the self-righteous hypocrisies, follies and evil-doings of the Washington ruling class—without ever once have been called to accountability by any kind of electorate at all.
Like Edith Wilson, she was apparently an able spouse and hostess—who taught classes at Northern Virginia Community College on the side and was pleased to call herself “doctor” owing to a quasi-honorary degree from the Biden family’s political sinecure at the University of Delaware.
And yet and yet. Jill Giacoppo is an utterly unqualified usurper, who has even less excuse for her blatant power grab than did Edith Wilson back in the day. At least in Edith’s time there was no 25th Amendment to regularize, organize and legitimize the transfer of power to the constitutionally prescribed role of Vice President.
To be specific, section 4 of the 25th Amendment addresses the precise case of a President unable to fulfill his constitutional role but who cannot or will not step aside.
In that event, it provides both a decision-maker and a procedure. The deciding group is the Vice President and a majority of the Cabinet. If this group declares a President “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office,” the Vice President immediately becomes Acting President; and he remains so unless a two-thirds majority of both chamber reinstate the former president.
So why was “Joe Biden” still in the Oval Office last Thursday night making a spectacle of his very disabled self before a global audience of 51 million?
Reprinted with permission from David Stockman’s Contra Corner.
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