As she ran for the White House in the 2024 election cycle, Nikki Haley made her calls for "new generational leadership" a key component of her Republican presidential campaign.
And front and center from day 1 of her campaign as the former South Carolina governor and former United Nations ambassador declared her candidacy in February 2023 was her call for "mandatory mental competency tests for politicians over 75 years old."
As Haley challenged then-76-year-old former President Donald Trump for the 2024 GOP nomination in hopes of eventually facing off in the general election against then-80-year-old President Joe Biden, the proposal became one of the most visible and at times controversial parts of her campaign stump speech.
Haley faced charges of ageism from a host of politicians opposed to the idea, including a now-83-year-old Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who at the time called her idea "absurd."
While Haley's campaign took off, and she ended up being the last Republican candidate standing against Trump during last year's primaries, she eventually bowed out of the race in March 2024 as Trump marched toward clinching the presidential nomination.
Fast-forward to today, and long-standing questions about Biden’s physical and mental fitness – and whether Democrats should have more forcefully urged him to bow out of the 2024 race – haven’t gone away; they’re front and center.
This as Biden's condition is once again making headlines, courtesy of excerpts from a new book being released this week, "Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again," which offers claims of a White House cover-up of the then-president's apparent cognitive decline.
Additionally, last week's leaked audio of Biden’s 2023 interview with Special Counsel Robert Hur, in which the then-president appears to suffer memory lapses, is also fueling the conversation.
Hur, who investigated whether Biden years earlier had improperly stored classified documents, made major headlines early last year when he decided not to charge Biden but described the then-president as an "elderly man with a poor memory."
Last week's developments were followed by Sunday's blockbuster announcement that Biden was diagnosed with an aggressive form of prostate cancer that had spread to his bones.
The news, while eliciting sympathy from both sides of the political aisle, is unlikely to sidetrack the current firestorm over the former president's mental acuity.
"While the media may have been shocked by Nikki's call for mental competency tests, Americans never were," a source in Haley's political orbit told Fox News. "It was common sense. Nikki always believed our leaders should be completely transparent and remember who they serve: the American people. After a yearslong cover-up, those who hid President Biden's mental decline must finally acknowledge what Nikki and the American people always knew to be true."
Haley, who was 51 when she announced her candidacy in 2023, reupped her calls for a mental competency test throughout her campaign.
In January last year, during the heat of the primary battle, Haley pointed to some verbal stumbles by Trump on the campaign trail.
"He's not what he was in 2016. He has declined. That's a fact," Haley said at the time.
Trump repeatedly fired back as he touted acing a cognitive test he took five years earlier and said, "I think I’m a lot sharper than her."
A month later, after the release of Hur's written report regarding Biden's mental acuity, Haley said, "Joe Biden can't remember major events in his life, like when he was vice president or when his son died."
"That is sad, but it will be even sadder if we have a person in the White House who is not mentally up to the most important job in the world," she added as she reiterated her calls for Biden to take a mental competency test "immediately."
Haley, in a Fox News op-ed in May 2023, spelled out the specific test she recommended for politicians over age 75.
"The Montreal Cognitive Assessment Test is a widely used tool for detecting cognitive decline," Haley wrote at the time.
And she elaborated, "This is not a qualification for office. Failing a mental competency test would not result in removal. It is about transparency. Voters deserve to know whether those who are making major decisions about war and peace, taxation and budgets, schools and safety can pass a very basic mental exam."
Veteran political scientist Wayne Lesperance, noting the current media spotlight on Biden, said it has "renewed concerns many Americans have about the age and ability of our elected officials. Public service demands clarity of thought, sound judgment, and the ability to manage complex issues."
And Lesperance, president of New England College, said "Americans must conclude that a fair and nonpartisan cognitive assessment, perhaps irrespective of age, is important to ensure all who seek to lead are equipped to serve with the sharpness and clarity the role requires."
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