On June 27th, President Joe Biden stepped onto the debate stage in Atlanta trailing in the polls but still the presumptive presidential nominee of the Democratic Party. It appeared that nothing short of a political earthquake would dislodge him from his place at the top of the Democratic ticket in November.
Well, guess what? The earth started shifting beneath Geritol Joe’s feet even before he opened his mouth. Walking stiffly on stage, he pointed at the podium which had been assigned to him days before as if unsure of where to go. He then waved to the nonexistent audience, apparently forgetting that his campaign had insisted that it be a closed set.
And it went downhill from there…
By the time the debate was over, the Democratic Party elite and their cohorts in the mainstream media were in full-blown panic mode, and the party powerbrokers had all but decided that Joe had to go. The only question that remained was whether he would leave willingly or if he would have to be pressured to drop out of the race.
Alternately blaming jet lag, a head cold, and Donald Trump, President Biden dug in his heels and brushed off his disastrous debate performance as just “a bad night.” Cataclysmic might be more accurate, because by the time he had to be helped off the stage by his wife Jill, Joe’s re-election campaign was taking on water and listing heavily to port.
It took 2 hours and 40 minutes from the time the S.S. Titanic struck an iceberg for it to sink below the surface of the frigid North Atlantic. By comparison, it took 24 days from the debate debacle for Joe Biden’s re-election bid to come to a screeching halt. Between those two momentous events, former President Donald Trump survived an assassination attempt, coming within a few millimeters of being fatally wounded.
That three-and-a-half-week turnaround – with Trump’s shooting sandwiched in between – led me to research similar periods in American history where one earthshattering event followed another in rapid succession.
Here is the list I came up with:
– On April 9, 1965, Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendered to Gen. Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Courthouse in Virginia, effectively ending the Civil War. Just five days later, Abraham Lincoln became the first of four American presidents to be assassinated, with Vice President Andrew Johnson succeeding him.
– On April 12, 1945, President Franklin D. Roosevelt suffered a cerebral hemorrhage and died just 82 days into his second term. Harry S. Truman, who had only met twice with FDR since becoming vice president, was sworn into office later that day as America’s 33rd president. However, it wasn’t until April 25th that Truman was fully briefed by Secretary of War Henry Stimson about America’s new atomic weapons. One hundred and three days later, Truman ordered the first bomb dropped on Hiroshima and the second one, three days later, on Nagasaki… effectively ending World War II and ushering in the atomic age.
– On April 4, 1968, Civil Rights icon Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was gunned down in Memphis by James Earl Ray. Just two months and two days later, Sen. Robert F. Kennedy – a leading candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination – was shot and killed in Los Angeles by Sirhan Sirhan. On August 28th, Vice President Hubert Humphrey was selected to be the party’s standard bearer at a raucous and sometimes violent convention in Chicago.
– On August 9, 1974, President Richard Nixon resigned, and Vice President Gerald Ford was sworn in as his replacement. Eleven days later, Ford nominated former New York Gov. Nelson Rockefeller to be vice president and on September 8th, Ford granted Nixon a full and unconditional pardon for any crimes he may have committed as president.
– On January 21, 1981, Ronald Reagan was sworn in as America’s 40th president. Just hours after his inaugural address, Iran released the remaining 52 American hostages who had been held captive for 444 days.
– On September 11, 2001, Islamic terrorists from Saudi Arabia and other Arab nations – financed by al Qaeda and directed by Osama bin Laden – launched coordinated and almost simultaneous attacks on the United States, damaging the Pentagon and bringing down the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City. In retaliation, President George W. Bush launched Operation Enduring Freedom 26 days later.
– On November 3, 2020, Joseph Robinette Biden won a close and hotly contested election over President Donald J. Trump. Amid reports of widespread election interference, thousands of pro-Trump supporters assembled in Washington D.C. on January 6, 2021, and some of them rallied outside the U.S. Capitol where the election results were to be certified. The gathering eventually got out of hand, with an undisclosed number of protesters storming the Capitol building. President Trump was impeached for a second time by the House of Representatives on January 13thand Joe Biden was inaugurated president a week later.
Politically speaking, I cannot come up with any more back-to-back bombshells, which makes me wonder when the other shoe will drop in the 2024 presidential race.
