Letters to the Editor: Biden should follow example of other US presidents

A reader says if any US president is not able, as they once were, to fully fulfill their duties, it is wise not to run for a second term and to generously give the opportunity to another from their party to run for the Oval Office

Lyndon Johnson, right, kisses his wife Lady Bird in Washington on May 8, 1956. Picture: AP Photo

While the concerns in the US are ongoing as to whether US president Joe Biden, in allegedly serious cognitive decline, should continue to run for a possible second term in the White House — there are previous US presidents who chose not to run for a second term.

The most famous if these is Lyndon B Johnson, who, feeling the pressures of a very unpopular war in Vietnam by 1968, and sensing his chances of re-election to a second term slipping away, said near the end of a long televised speech from the White House on March 31, 1968: “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 than the awesome duties of this office — the presidency of your country.