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Opinion

Ward: Declining reelection bid is nothing new

Posted

Just minutes after President Biden withdrew from his campaign, remarkably uniform statements sprang from many Republican sources claiming that a president who withdraws from seeking a second term is unfit to complete his remaining first term.

A rudimentary knowledge of U.S. history would have shown that Presidents James K. Polk, James Buchanan, Rutherford B. Hayes, Theodore Roosevelt, Calvin Coolidge and Lyndon B. Johnson all declined to seek a second term, yet fulfilled the duties to which they swore an oath. The same claimants, nonetheless, support an individual, their anointed leader and nominee Donald J. Trump, convicted felon and habitual fabulist, to serve in the same office as did George Washington.

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