Joe Biden is America’s Konstantin Chernenko - Konstantin Chernenko was a loyal, steadfast member of the Communist Party in the Soviet Union.

A drab, stern man by bearing, Chernenko was 72 years-old when he was “eased” into the top spot in the Soviet Union in 1984 after succeeding Yuri Andropov (who died in office). Chernenko was terminally ill with an array of maladies and was widely viewed by the Soviet elite as a figurehead or merely a placeholder until they could find someone better to succeed him. Chernenko was a shell of a man, riddled with his terminal illness and run down by the natural effects of hard living and advanced age.

But he was the perfect candidate to be the seventh General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

Chernenko was surrounded by rabid ideologues and party hacks. His physical and mental weakness would be to their advantage as they would be the ones truly running the Soviet Union while Chernenko ambled around the Kremlin, shouting obscenities and falling asleep early in the day. Chernenko was the embodiment of all that had gone wrong with the Soviet system.

Like him, the USSR was sclerotic, close-minded, and inefficient.

I once asked my dear friend and colleague, the late Soviet era defector to the United States, Yuri Maltsev, what it was like living at the end of the Soviet Union. He described how, during the 1980s, most Soviet citizens lived smaller and smaller, atomized lifestyles the longer the 1980s wore on in the USSR. In fact, existence was so bleak during the Andropov-Chernenko-Gorbachev years that many Soviet citizens simply refused to have children because of their hopelessness (when he got to the United States, Yuri would end up making a large family in the American Midwest due to, as he often said, the “freedom in the water.”)

Immiseration coincided with the Chernenko years in the Soviet Union. Outside of the USSR, Chernenko was viewed as a joke by most other world leaders. When then-US President Ronald Reagan was asked by an angry press as to why he hadn’t met with the Soviet leadership, Reagan ruefully quipped that he had not held meetings with the Soviet leadership because “they kept dying on me.”

Chernenko’s physical and mental decrepitude not only deprived his people of any sense of dynamism they may have had, but it signaled to the world that the Soviet Union was on its last legs.

The USSR’s enemies, therefore, were able to exploit the country’s relative weakness on the world stage, as even fellow communist states, like China, believed that the USSR was in terminal decline.

What nation would want to stand by such a dying leviathan?

Joe Biden: The American Chernenko

Just 33 years later, the United States appears as the USSR did in the 1980s. President Joe Biden is running for reelection at the age of 81 years. That’s nine years older than Konstantin Chernenko was when he became leader of the Soviet Union.

And while Mr. Biden is not riddled with a terminal disease, most Americans—75 percent, according to a recent CNN poll—do not think that President Biden has the “stamina and mental sharpness” to be president anymore. In fact, concerns about Biden’s possible age-related mental decline have dogged the forty-sixth president since he ran for the presidency four years ago. As he has aged while in office, and the longer he has been president, these concerns have only grown.

Joe Biden has a paltry 38.5 percent approval rating as president. He’s losing Latino voters to the former president, Donald J. Trump, who is again running for the White House (Donald Trump, the man who, in 2016, called Mexican immigrants “rapists,” “murderers,” and described them as not being “the best” that Mexico has to offer, is winning Hispanics over).

Last April, shortly after Biden announced his intentions to run for reelection, the New York Post analyzed his public schedule and determined that President Biden was only working 30 hours a week—five hours less than France’s notoriously short work week.

Recently, Biden was cleared of any charges related to accusations that he improperly took and stored classified documents from when he was vice-president. Robert Hur, a Department of Justice (DOJ) official who previously served as the Trump Administration’s lead prosecutor in Maryland, headed the investigation into these claims. Hur opted not to charge the 81-year-old president because, as Hur’s official report for the DOJ stated that, Biden was a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.” Hur’s 350-page report makes multiple, explicit references to President Biden having “diminished faculties” due to his advanced age.

Joe Biden Must Step Down

Like Chernenko,  I would argue Mr. Biden is not running his White House (how could he be, if he’s only working 30 hours a week?) Instead, it is a group of younger, ideologically rabid Democratic Party staffers who are in control of the country. Multiple centers of power have grown out of the Biden Administration precisely because the commander-in-chief has been so absent from performing his duties.

As this situation persists, the United States falls apart internally while its vicious foreign rivals—China, Russia, North Korea, Iran, and others—pick the American position as global leader apart, just as foreign powers picked apart Chernenko’s USSR on the world stage.

In the last week along, Joe Biden has bumbled several press appearances and has only reinforced the image that he’s America’s Chernenko. These displays will only worsen over time. That is why President Biden must step down for the sake of our country. He simply cannot handle the pressures of the presidency at his advanced age. And if he won’t step down then, if there is a patriot among his cabinet, the twenty-fifth amendment must be invoked and Biden must be removed from office so that someone more able can succeed him.

About the Author 

Brandon J. Weichert is a former Congressional staffer and geopolitical analyst who is a contributor at The Washington Times, as well as at American Greatness and the Asia Times. He is the author of Winning Space: How America Remains a Superpower (Republic Book Publishers), Biohacked: China’s Race to Control Life, and The Shadow War: Iran’s Quest for Supremacy. Weichert can be followed via Twitter @WeTheBrandon.

Image Credit: Creative Commons.