The first draft of history, specifically, President Joe Biden’s decision to withdraw from his campaign to seek reelection, is being rewritten in real time. In addition to being likened to Washington and Cincinnatus, Biden is now drawing media comparisons to Lyndon Baines Johnson.
Watch as CBS’s Mark Strassman points out an underreported parallel in the presidents’ decisions to step aside:
LYNDON JOHNSON: I shall not seek and I will not accept the nomination of my party for another term as your president.
MARK STRASSMAN: Updegrove says that decision, like President Biden's to step aside, was more than political. There were health concerns.
MARK UPDEGROVE: LBJ truly believed that he might jeopardize the country because his heart might fail.
We were told that Biden is stepping down due to bad polling, proof evident that he had no path to victory in 2024. But now we are getting a sliver of an admission that health was always a concern. The media are slowly circling back to what everyone else already knew to be true.
Of course, the big rewrite of history here is that Biden is somehow walking away from a second term in a patriotic exercise. This isn’t the case, either.
The truth is that Biden was pushed out of the race by his own party due to the aforementioned bad polling after the disastrous June 20th debate, which exposed the cognitive decline that people talked about for so long but never drew coverage in the media.
Expect more of this in the coming days.
Click “expand” to view the full transcript of the aforementioned report as aired on the CBS Evening News on Monday, July 22nd, 2024:
CBS EVENING NEWS
7/22/24
6:55 PM
NORAH O’DONNELL: Mark Twain once said, “history doesn't repeat itself, but it often rhymes”. President Biden's stunning decision to not seek reelection is certainly historic, but as CBS’s Mark Strassmann reports and tonight "Eye on America," it also echoes another president’s choice in another turbulent year, 1968.
LYNDON B. JOHNSON: …tested many times, this past year or --
MARK STRASSMAN: Revolt clawed at Lyndon Johnson in 1968, an unpopular incumbent targeted by fellow Democrats. Sound familiar?
MARK UPDEGROVE: 2024 is very reminiscent of 1968 for a variety of reasons.
STRASSMAN: Historian Mark Updegrove, is President and CEO of the LBJ Foundation. We spoke about striking parallels between Presidents Johnson and Biden, and between 1968's America and today's.
STRASSMAN: Mood of the country.
UPDEGROVE: Divided, tempestuous, a lot of extreme rhetoric. We had the same thing in 1968 in that we were being shaken into our very foundations.
STRASSMAN Especially divisive then- Vietnam. America's sons and daughters dying in southeast Asia. CBS News’s Walter Cronkite was a turning point.
WALTER CRONKITE: It seems now more certain than ever that the bloody experience of Vietnam is to end in a stalemate.
STRASSMAN: Johnson believed losing Cronkite on Vietnam meant his reelection was also unwinnable. In March 1968, he quit the race.
JOHNSON: I shall not seek and I will not accept the nomination of my party for another term as your president.
STRASSMAN: Updegrove says that decision, like President Biden's to step aside, was more than political. There were health concerns.
UPDEGROVE: LBJ truly believed that he might jeopardize the country because his heart might fail.
STRASSMAN: But Democrats have to wonder whether 1968 is also a cautionary tale in the race to keep the Oval Office. Look at what happened once LBJ stepped aside.
First, a double tragedy.
REPORTER: Memphis today is officially in mourning.
STRASSMAN: Martin Luther King murdered in Memphis. Robert Kennedy gunned down in the Los Angeles hotel kitchen.
JOHNSON: We can achieve nothing by lawlessness and divisiveness.
STRASSMAN: When Butler, Pennsylvania, happened, did you think to yourself “another similarity”?
UPDEGROVE: Without question. Just as in 1968, you had the feeling that anything can happen next.
STRASSMAN: Like Chicago's 1968 Democratic National Convention. Outside, mayhem. Inside, rancor.
DAN RATHER: Don't push me, take your hands off of me.
UPDEGROVE: Divided delegates nominated Hubert Humphrey, LBJ’s vice president. Mr. Biden has endorsed his VP, Kamala Harris.
HUBERT H. HUMPHREY: I seek to lead a great nation.
STRASSMAN: Humphrey, wounded by chaos, lost to Richard Nixon.
Which of the parallels resonates most with you?
UPDEGROVE: What our democracy looks like today, but we should also remember that we came out of 1968 ultimately a stronger, better nation.
STRASSMAN: A nation again shocked by a sitting president feeling scorned, bowing out. For Eye on America, Mark Strassman, in Austin.
