A presidential health crisis that ultimately resulted in the first lady of the United States wielding extraordinary power while covering up the president’s condition began in Pueblo more than a century ago.

That crisis and the ensuing cover-up have similarities to today’s controversy regarding the physical and mental abilities of President Joe Biden.

President Woodrow Wilson was elected in 1912 largely due to the split within the Republican Party when former President Theodore Roosevelt ran on the Progressive Party ticket against Wilson and incumbent Republican President William Howard Taft.  Narrowly reelected in 1916, Wilson was only the second Democrat to be elected since the Civil War. Although elected as a reformer, he segregated the federal workforce after decades of desegregation.

President Wilson’s first wife, Ellen, died in 1914 and he married Edith in 1915.

Following the end of World War I in 1918, Wilson embraced the Treaty of Versailles and the proposal to create a League of Nations, which required approval of the United States Senate, where it faced formidable opposition.

On Sept. 3, 1919, Wilson embarked on a four-week, 8,000-mile, 29-city nationwide railroad tour to build public support for the treaty and the League of Nations. Wilson’s health was already questionable after suffering strokes earlier in his life.

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On Sept. 25, Wilson spoke to 10,000 people at the Colorado State Fair in Pueblo before addressing another 3,000 at the newly built Memorial Hall which he dedicated to veterans of World War I.

Late that evening, Wilson collapsed from exhaustion and the rest of the tour was canceled. The president’s train raced back to Washington, D.C. where he suffered a stroke on Oct. 2, 1919. The Pueblo speech would be the last public appearance of President Woodrow Wilson.

During the next 17 months until Wilson’s second term expired in January 1921, First Lady Edith Wilson essentially functioned as the de facto president of the United States as she joined the White House physician at the time, Dr. Cary Grayson, in concealing the president’s incapacitated condition.

First Lady Edith Wilson would describe this time as “my stewardship” of the presidency during her husband’s illness. She decided what documents the president would see and they would be returned with comments in her handwriting. She alone interviewed the nominee for Secretary of the Treasury.

The current First Lady of the United States, Dr. Jill Biden, has impressive personal and professional backgrounds that have served President Joe Biden well. After marrying Joe Biden in 1977, she helped raise the president’s surviving children following the tragic loss of his first wife and daughter in an automobile accident shortly after he was elected to the U.S. Senate from Delaware in 1972. She has had a long teaching career and continues to teach at Northern Virginia Community College while being the First Lady.

But it has becoming increasingly clear Dr. Biden has played a major role in trying to conceal the decline of President Biden’s physical and mental abilities, which came to a head during his disastrous debate with former President Donald Trump on June 27. But she isn’t alone.

Ever since Biden was inaugurated in January 2021, national Democratic leaders have zealously defended President Biden’s faltering health and attacked critics as political cheap-shot artists. Dr. Biden embarrassed herself at a rally following the debate where she lauded the president for “answering every question” establishing a new low for evaluating a presidential debate performance.

The American people have had deep concerns about his physical and mental abilities throughout his presidency.  The most recent Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos national poll shows 67% of all voters think President Biden should step aside and even 56% of Democrats agree.

Post-debate polling also shows Trump has taken a clear lead in national polls and especially in the swing states that will decide this presidential election.  Democrats are worried not only that Trump will win but President Biden will take Democrats down in tough congressional and state elections.

National Democrats are now falling all over themselves either outright calling for him to withdraw from the race or openly asking him to deeply consider whether he should continue running. 

But ultimately, the only persons who can convince the president to withdraw are Dr. Jill Biden and other family members. The trappings of the presidency are terribly addictive. Dr. Biden was recently featured on the cover of Vogue magazine in an outfit costing thousands of dollars.

Beyond practical political considerations, does the Biden family really believe their husband and father is capable of serving another full term of four years as president?

The brutal truth is Democrats face almost certain defeat not only for president but in Congress as well as long as President Biden is in the race.

Dr. Jill Biden’s impressive lifetime of accomplishment and service is being sullied by her refusal to accept the reality of the president’s mental and physical infirmities.

By allowing the president to continue running, she is failing her family, her Democratic Party and ultimately her nation.

Dick Wadhams is a former Colorado Republican state chairman.