Zürcher Nachrichten - Joe Biden: Democratic fighter, now battling cancer

Now, the 82-year-old former president -- who has faced renewed scrutiny over his mental acuity while in office, before ceding the White House to arch-nemesis Donald Trump -- is facing his own cancer battle.

His office announced Sunday that he was diagnosed with an "aggressive" form of prostate cancer, with "metastasis to the bone," adding that he was reviewing his treatment options.

Biden wanted to go down in history as the man who saved America from Donald 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 Trump's first four years, before pushing through an impressive raft of legislation.

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

And it will be defined by a single fateful decision -- to defy mounting concerns about his age and run for reelection in 2024.

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

His replacement as Democratic candidate, his vice president Kamala Harris, was left with an almost impossible task to prevent Trump's return -- and indeed it proved insurmountable.

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

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

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

- Historic challenges -

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 savior.

Biden was America's oldest elected president at the time -- until Trump's election in 2024 -- and arguably more famous for his gaffes and for being 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 Trump had trashed, there were irreparable problems.

- 'Get back up' -

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 percent in a final CNN poll.

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

His lax border policies led to record crossings of illegal immigrants, which 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 had battled through the tragedy of a car crash that killed his wife and baby daughter in 1972, just days after he'd been elected a US senator at the age of 29 -- then rebuilt his life with the help of his second wife, First Lady Jill Biden.

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.

- 'Magic of America' -

But age was a battle he couldn't win.

Trump dubbed 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 Biden from unscripted public appearances -- until it was too late.

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

F.Schneider--NZN