Is it right that deciding who should run for the White House is a medical report (or not even that, the impression of some expert is enough) that states that a candidate is not capable of governing? This is happening in the United States, in a dangerous drift where politics (and democracy) give way to the work of psychiatrists.

After years of mutual accusations (Trump is crazy/sick, Biden is senile, etc.) we are now at level 2.0. The watershed was the first TV debate on CNN, in which Biden actually appeared down and with a less than shrill voice (at times even confused), while Trump appeared to be in better shape. The debate had not even ended when unprecedented media pressure was immediately unleashed to convince the US president to step aside, leaving someone else (to be decided who) to run in his place in the presidential elections in November. But who said that Biden is sick and no longer capable (and able) to do the commander-in-chief? The self-styled experts, who indulged in the analyses, obviously remotely, making diagnoses that found ample space in newspapers and on TV all over the world. Thus, in the US (and not only), there was much more talk about Biden’s health and not about what the two challengers said or did not say.

Let’s be clear, Biden is not in top form and he is getting older, even if Trump is not a youngster. And to say that if Biden were to be re-elected he would hardly be in a condition to govern at the end of the next term is a non-issue, given that the vice president exists for a specific reason.

Let us be careful of this medical-psychiatric drift that claims the right to let experts decide who should govern, depriving citizen-voters of the right/duty to freely make their own democratic choice. Even to want to trust an elderly person, because he is considered better than a younger one.