Updated Sunday, July 14, 2pm: Following Saturday’s assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump, the public program to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act at the LBJ Presidential Library – originally scheduled for Monday, July 15 and to include an address in Austin by President Joe Biden – has been postponed to a new date in July, to be announced later this week. Mark K. Updegrove, President & CEO of the LBJ Foundation and a presidential historian, affirmed the president still planned to attend. “We are honored President Biden remains committed to joining us at the LBJ Library to mark the 60th Anniversary of the Civil Rights Act and we look forward to hosting him later this month.”
After President Joe Biden’s alarming debate performance against a candidate proposing an imperial presidency, Austin has been set as a stage for some of the political drama still unfolding.
Last week, Austin’s longtime U.S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett became the first sitting Democrat to call on Biden to withdraw from the presidential race. In his statement, he pointed to local history: President Lyndon B. Johnson dropped out in 1968. “Too much is at stake to risk a Trump victory,” Doggett wrote. “Under very different circumstances, [LBJ] made the painful decision to withdraw. President Biden should do the same.”
Now, Biden is set to deliver a keynote speech at the LBJ Presidential Library in Austin on July 15, as the Republican National Convention begins in Milwaukee. The speech will center on civil rights and democracy, per a news release. The same day in Austin, Biden will sit down with Lester Holt for an interview set to air Monday night.
Despite ominous polling, Biden has repeatedly vowed to stay in the race, and only a handful of sitting Democrats had publicly called for his withdrawal as of Wednesday. Doggett told the Chronicle that official statements don’t show the full picture.
“I’m not starting a career,” Doggett said. “I’m not seeking a higher office. I’m not in an endangered seat. Many of my colleagues are, and I’ve had many of them come up to me and say, ‘Thanks for expressing what I can’t say.’”
Doggett’s Decision to Speak
Doggett said he isn’t turning his back on Biden. He’ll campaign for him if he stays in the race. But in the days since he asked Biden to step down, he hasn’t changed his mind about the strength of Biden’s candidacy, nor the stakes of a second Donald Trump term. “We’re talking about a criminal and his gang who want to take over our government.”
Doggett didn’t offer a replacement candidate, but he does have ideas about a replacement process. “I think we have a number of qualified people, and what I’m advocating for is a fair, open democratic process,” Doggett said. “I think a process that could involve town halls around the country, that could involve an open convention – would be messy, chaotic, and productive.”
“I have not focused on the president’s health. Though I am more troubled by it as the week has gone by and after the interviews that he’s done. There seems to be less than complete candor about what his health is,” said Doggett, who is himself 77. He added that if Democrats don’t acknowledge Biden’s health, the party faces “a credibility issue.”
“I’m not in an endangered seat. Many of my colleagues are, and I’ve had many of them come up to me and say, ‘Thanks for expressing what I can’t say.’” – U.S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett
Though few Democrats have joined Doggett’s call, he isn’t proposing this approach in a vacuum. A leaked memo circulated by big Democratic donors imagines a “blitz primary” with forums hosted by A-list celebrities, and Wednesday former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi hinted that Biden should reconsider, saying: “It’s up to the president to decide if he is going to run. We’re all encouraging him to make that decision.”
Doggett says his decision to speak up was his alone, but before publishing it, he talked with as many members of Congress as he could – and every member of the party’s leadership he could find – to express the need for a different candidate. “I got a number of responses, and responses from people across Austin saying that he needed to be replaced. On that Monday, the Supreme Court came down with its horrible decision about immunity. It was one of those situations where someone needed to speak out. None of the people I talked to were speaking out, except a couple of them being dispatched to defend the president. So I decided that someone was me.”
Precedents of Presidents
If Doggett’s vision for a democratic process to replace Biden plays out, it would be unprecedented. But there is also no precedent for a president running amid widespread concern about cognitive decline, said H.W. Brands, a UT-Austin history professor and author of several books on U.S. presidents.
“This does seem like a turning point in the history of the presidency,” Brands said. “But people thought that when Richard Nixon resigned from Watergate, and people thought that when Franklin Roosevelt was elected for a fourth time, and people thought that when Abraham Lincoln held the Union together during the Civil War. So there is a feeling that, boy, this time is different. And, well, this time is different. … Everything is unique in its own way.”
That said, there are some lessons to be learned from previous presidencies.
“I think the Democrats can learn a lot from ’68,” said UT-Austin’s Shannon Bow O’Brien, an expert in presidential speechmaking. “There were a lot of mistakes made in ’68.”
LBJ was weighing a divisive war, panic over the global economy, and multiple heart attacks when he announced: “I do not believe that I should devote an hour or a day of my time to any personal partisan causes or to any duties other than the awesome duties of this office – the presidency of your country. Accordingly, I shall not seek and I will not accept the nomination.”
After some jockeying, the Democratic party nominated Vice President Hubert Humphrey, who ultimately lost to Richard Nixon by a slim margin in the popular vote. “The perception of the public was that he was going to be Johnson’s next term. And people were worried about that,” O’Brien said. She thinks Democrats today should consider that loss: “I think they’re in a Catch-22 because one of the only people who’s polling worse than Biden at times is his vice president.”
One poll presenting hypothetical matchups found that among six top contenders, only Michelle Obama would beat Trump at this time. (Obama’s biographer said Monday that a potential Obama ticket “is as unlikely as it could possibly be.”)
UT-Austin’s Daron Shaw, who also conducts the Fox News Poll, said hypothetical polling is “really tricky,” because several options presented are likely unknown quantities to respondents. And if pollsters ask voters how much they know about candidates before asking for their preferences, it can bias respondents against the lesser-known candidate.
“Biden’s argument has been the electability argument. He’s said, ‘I won all the primaries, and I’m not going to deny the will of the people,’ which I find somewhat hilarious, given that they chased all the competition away,” Shaw said. “But if your argument is electability, then he’s in a pretty good place. Because right now, all the Democrats know who Joe Biden is, and he’s hemorrhaging a little bit of support, but not a lot. … The problem with these other hypothetical candidates is that a lot of people don’t know who they are. That person, if they are the nominee, is going to get known. And probably in a way that almost all Democrats are enthused, right? Because it’s not Trump. And whatever problems Biden has, unless it’s Kamala, they don’t have that problem.”
The 1968 election is only one data point, so how much should Vice President Humphrey’s loss frighten Democrats about a Harris candidacy?
“That [election] makes for an obvious parallel,” Brands said. “The difference, though, is that LBJ had become politically very unpopular for a very unpopular foreign war [in Vietnam]. And so it was issue driven, rather than personal health driven. … It’s not politics that’s driving any decision here and driving the people like Lloyd Doggett who say he needs to step aside.”
There are a few good examples of presidents with serious health problems, but they’re not very instructive here: Franklin D. Roosevelt was paralyzed from the waist down, but his health problems “had essentially nothing to do with his mental faculties, with his ability to stay focused,” Brands said. Woodrow Wilson was incapacitated for 18 months after a stroke in 1919, but hiding cognitive decline was easier then. “Nobody really knew the extent of his impairment, because his wife didn’t let anybody in.” Ronald Reagan was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s a few years after leaving office, and in his second term people inside the White House saw the president becoming forgetful. “But he could almost always pull it together for the moments when he had to be sharp, when he had to be on task,” Brands said.
In Biden’s case, some Republican lawmakers – including House Speaker Mike Johnson – have called for his cabinet to oust him under the 25th Amendment, citing cognitive lapses. Such an ouster has never happened.
“This does seem like a turning point in the history of the presidency.” – H.W. Brands, UT-Austin history professor
O’Brien, an expert on speeches, said the circular nature of Trump’s public speaking doesn’t bode well for his cognitive health either. But, she said, the strength of a president’s voice and his appearance matter. She points to the first televised debate in 1960 between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon. On substance, they were well matched, but Nixon was recovering from a flu and looked drained onscreen. The result was that most radio listeners called the first debate a draw or felt Nixon won, while JFK won over television viewers by a significant margin. JFK also won the election. “The Trump campaign and administration doesn’t really care about facts,” O’Brien said. “It cares about appearances.”
Options, Options, Options
So far, Biden has doubled down on vows to stay in the race.
Brands raised a possibility that hasn’t gotten much press: Biden could resign, making Kamala Harris president and an almost undeniable choice for the DNC.
“If he wanted to see that she got the nomination, I think that’s what he ought to do,” Brands said. “Are you [the DNC] going to deny the nomination to the president of the United States?”
Or, rather than letting Harris lead the ticket, she could be removed entirely: O’Brien points out that Biden could pull in a younger vice presidential candidate with less baggage to get concerned voters on board.
The DNC could conceivably accept Biden but refuse to accept Harris, if they feel the ticket is in jeopardy. Brands said there’s precedent for VP swapping – FDR had three vice presidents during his four terms in office, and Abraham Lincoln tossed out his vice president when he ran for reelection in the middle of the Civil War.
“Think of it as an opportunity,” O’Brien said. “Joe Biden and the Democrats have a huge problem not connecting with younger voters. They feel like they’re not being listened to. They don’t like Donald Trump, but they don’t feel like they can vote for the Democrats because of these policies [in Israel]. If the Democrats look at this like an opportunity for a new voice, bringing somebody in either on the presidential or the vice presidential side that people under 30 are excited about, I think that will help turnout.”
Doggett didn’t speak about Kamala Harris’ role specifically but emphasized the power of breaking the mold. “What some view as chaos,” Doggett said, “is really a great opportunity to refocus attention on what the Democratic Party and the presidency is all about.”
This article appears in July 12 • 2024.
