Reagan's Kid Has Advice for Biden on His Cancer

Patti Davis: Biden should talk openly about his illness, much as her dad did about his Alzheimer's
Posted May 20, 2025 8:18 AM CDT
Reagan's Daughter to Biden: Speak About Cancer
Then-President Biden speaks to the media in North Charleston, South Carolina, on Jan. 19.   (AP Photo/Stephanie Scarbrough, File)

With the news that former President Biden has an aggressive form of prostate cancer, former first daughter Patti Davis acknowledges that while it's obviously a very personal matter for the ex-president, it can also be "an opportunity to show leadership, not in the arena of national or global politics, but on a vulnerable, human level." In her essay for the New York Times, the eldest child of Ronald and Nancy Reagan talks about the devastation of her father being diagnosed with Alzheimer's, and how the Reagans opted to share their news publicly in the hopes that it would help others dealing with the same condition. "Facing one's own mortality is a solitary journey, yet seeing through the shadows to an outstretched hand, hearing in that wilderness that there is someone else wrestling with the same emotions" can be invaluable, Davis writes.

Davis also notes that Biden speaking openly now about his cancer could go a long way in tamping down suspicions that Biden knew about his cancer for longer than he let on. "After decades of being a politician, he can just be an all-too-mortal human being," she writes. That's possible even more for Biden than it had been for Ronald Reagan, as the latter was forced to stop giving speeches and making statements as the disease progressed. "For Mr. Biden, the announcement of his illness can ... be the start of a new relationship with the American people," Davis writes. "No doubt some will lean into his vulnerability as an opportunity for attack. I suspect a great many more people, no matter their political orientation, would simply be grateful for his openness." (Here's what Biden himself had to say after his diagnosis was made public.)

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