Leonid Brezhnev led the former Soviet Union as General Secretary of the Communist Party until 1982. But like many Russian bureaucrats who struggled with excessive smoking, drinking and weight gain, he aged prematurely. And like many of them, his disability did not cause him to abdicate.

In his late 60s and early 70s, Brezhnev's growing ill health prevented him from traveling abroad or making public appearances. In fact, his infirmities left the USSR without a true leader for the last six or seven years of his term.

Brezhnev was exonerated because Soviet state media doctored photos and videos to prove that he was in good health and active at all times.

“Journalists” published false statements. They created a story about Brezhnev being strong and healthy, working long hours for the Russian people. Opposition journalists who tried to report the true and dire situation risked losing their jobs, their freedom, and even their lives.

Instead, the “reporters” of Pravda (“Truth”), the official print megaphone of the Communist Party Central Committee, wrote lies about Brezhnev’s hectic work days.

Pravda's editors spun an allegory about the respect (and fear) the world had for such a dynamic leader, even though Brezhnev's health had rendered him a virtual recluse.

Russians shrugged, having long been accustomed to the lying media and their lies. Besides, Brezhnev was a dogmatic Stalinist Communist, so his job was not to shake or disrupt the Russian Communist hierarchy.

Instead, he presided over the penultimate Soviet “period of stagnation,” while ossified Communism increasingly destroyed all motivation and hope, leaving Russians poor, cynical and powerless.

Something similar is happening in the sclerotic United States under President Joe Biden. Like the late Brezhnev, Biden is now president in name only. He has outsourced his government to far-left government agencies, vestiges of the Obama era.

Now Biden can no longer even carry out the ceremonial task assigned to him: to lend a semblance of moderation to the extreme, nihilistic policies that are stalling the country.

But our own Pravda reporters are assuring the American people that Biden, a recluse who works three days a week, has more energy and drive in private than people half his age.

Subservient staffers plant stories about Biden's extraordinary dynamism in the ears of Soviet-like reporters.

Opponents are publicly demonized as peddlers of “cheap counterfeits.”

As Biden's reclusive lifestyle has sparked rumors that he is nearing dementia, he has been whisked away to stage staged interviews that must be edited before they are released, or to answer questions that are secretly posted in advance.

On those sporadic occasions when the state media and Biden supporters have no control over events, such as presidential debates and international summits, our Pravda media works with all its might to convince the public that what they are seeing and hearing is not reality.

In the end, Brezhnev could not even stagger onto the stage to celebrate the national Communist holiday of May Day.

Eventually his disabilities became so obvious that even his employees and the media could no longer hide them, and he disappeared from public view, leaving Russians with no idea who was running their communist state.

Then one day, Soviet propagandists suddenly but calmly announced that the dynamic Brezhnev had died and that his successor, Yuri Andropov, was now running the USSR ably.

Biden is also in a slump: He cannot hold press conferences, town hall meetings, debates or actual interviews, which would prove to the public that his cognitive abilities are too impaired to continue in the presidency.

But Biden, who lives in seclusion, can no longer hide away in his familiar three-day work week during the campaign.

The media is doing its best to continue the Orwellian scheme, claiming that Trump interrupted Biden in the recent debates (which he didn't) and lied (although not as much as Biden did), and at times reporters blurt out that a lazy, left-wing Biden is still preferable to an active, conservative Trump.

What does the future hold for our increasingly Sovietized country?

We will continue to be lectured about Biden’s vitality — and we won’t be lectured until Biden resigns or does something worse.

Then our own newspaper Pravda will publish a new official line, convincing us that his successor, Vice President Kamala Harris, is an underrated genius whose past work has resolved the border crisis and restored American primacy in space.

The same reporters who one day declared Biden to be a de facto Socrates behind closed doors, then suddenly confessed when their lies no longer worked, will be praising our new fellow leader, the smart, capable, eloquent, articulate Harris.

Victor Davis Hanson is a distinguished fellow at the Center for American Greatness. He is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and the author of World War II: How the First Global Conflict Was Fought and Won, published by Basic Books. He can be contacted at authorvdh@gmail.com.

The views and opinions expressed in this editorial are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official position of the Daily Caller.