Every U.S. presidential campaign contains a series of running debates on topics of passing interest, usually driven by news media’s need to seize on something seemingly new. They ask everybody about it for a few news cycles, then jump to something else.
Let’s show some sympathy for media pressed to find a sufficient series of seemingly fresh subjects to beat to death for news consumers during what has become America’s longest-ever presidential campaign — two years.
Other countries pick leaders in 60 days. We take 730, half the term they're fighting over.
The 2024 campaign is different in one important aspect. The top topic of concern at the moment – Joe Biden’s age – is not going away, as hard as his sympathetic media legions try to downplay it.
Biden turns 81 in November. He’d be 82 at a second inauguration. And 86 if he completed the term. The bad news for him is he can’t do anything about the age problem except attempt a lame joke. Ronald Reagan could pull off self-deprecation beautifully. An arrogant Biden can't.
Biden will be the final U.S. president born before the end of World War II. Many Americans eagerly await younger leaders — in Congress, too.
The 46th president arrived on Nov. 20, 1942, 11 months after Pearl Harbor, the 9/11 of that era. On that same day, Franklin Roosevelt, the 32nd president, worked until 11:30 p.m. He would die in office 17 months later.
And therein lies the pressing question for Joe Biden – and Americans. Can the garrulous goof survive until 2029? He’s already a decade beyond the average lifespan of a male born in 1942.
And if Joe Biden fails again to think about the country instead of an election and doesn't muster the strength to dump the inept Kamala Harris as vice-presidential partner, the country could likely encounter President Giggles. Candidly, she was not picked for any skills. That happens a lot in identity politics.
Republican candidate Nikki Haley is already warning ominously and accurately that a vote for Joe Biden next year is, in reality, a vote for Harris to inherit the Oval Office.
So, is Joseph Robinette Biden too old to be president? Every day, he sets a new record.
My answer is: No. He’s not too old. Neither is Donald Trump at 77.
We’re asking the wrong question. Age is merely a number.
The real question should be, regardless of age, is Joe Biden up to being president? Does he have the mental sharpness and physical stamina for another 1,460 days as Commander in Chief?
The answer is: No. Clearly. Absolutely. Resoundingly, No.
- He was not even up to the job in the last campaign. But enough voters hated the other guy that they settled on the most familiar alternative without really examining the evidence.
- There was plenty: Biden would forget where he was, asking Iowans what they thought of their infrastructure there in Ohio.
- Arguing with town hall questioners, calling them names. Telling blacks they couldn’t be black if they failed to vote for him.
- The most valuable thing a presidential candidate has is time. Every minute, every media hit, every handshake matters. The good ones invest it wisely. Joe Biden typically knocked off work by mid-morning.
- He hid in his basement, using COVID as cover, while his opponent did three rallies in as many states in one day.
Who acts like Biden did? Someone who’s fading mentally and physically, who can’t handle campaign rigors, let alone presidential demands, whose handlers fear mistakes. That’s who.
And someone who thinks a 2020 strategy will work in 2024. That no one has noticed his frailty, that Donald Trump will be the opponent again and not be smarter, and that Trump will still scare enough people into voting for good old Uncle Joe.
Well, two important things have happened since 2020:
One, Trump has been off the main stage for a few years, allowing many folks to forget or accept the tumult and outbursts of his term compared to the current scary reality.
And two, Joe Biden has been on the main stage that same entire time, providing virtually daily evidence that he’s fading before our eyes, not up to the job right now, let alone for another four years.
Shuffling. Falling. Mumbling. Shouting. Whispering weirdly. Falling asleep in a televised Oval Office meeting. Forgetting to shake hands with fellow leaders. Garbling even printed notes in his hands. Getting lost leaving a stage. The constant flow of obvious lies. Last fall, Biden shocked donors at a fundraiser by talking about an imminent Armageddon. It hasn't come yet. And he's never mentioned it again.
And worst, boasting often that an unidentified “they” tells him what to do all the time, where to stand, who to call on, whether or not the president of the United States is allowed to answer questions.
Such words of weakness, suggesting others are in charge, coming out of the mouths of any other modern president are inconceivable.
Everybody knows chief executives have aides. But no adult, let alone a commander-in-chief, boasts in public of being told what to do. They might say, “The First Lady told me to be brief tonight, for a change.” (Laughter)
But the fact that this lifelong politician publicly admits he's being handled as an excuse, that he shows no mental grasp of what a debilitating, self-demeaning, politically destructive confession that is to make before his countrymen, is by itself de facto proof that Biden’s not up to the job.
Mainstream media plays down these episodes, of course. But even so, polls show overwhelming majorities of both Republicans and Democrats have decided they don’t want Biden to run in 2024 and that he is not competent to serve again as president.
How can anyone miss it? His short, old-man shoe-scoots to guard against falling again. His glassy eyes. The open mouth. The delays speaking, racist remarks later edited by the White House. A wife showing the president where to stand, sit, go. Staff notes reminding him to say hello when entering a meeting.
Before the end of a recent Medal of Honor presentation, Biden abruptly walked out of the room, leaving behind a confused audience and recipient.
These Biden episodes of helplessness are so obvious, including frequent vacations totaling 40 percent of his term, short workdays, abbreviated workweeks, and regular retreats to locations where visitors go undocumented. His wife and party’s refusal to acknowledge them and insistence he’s running again suggest elder abuse to many.
These sights and scenes of mental and physical decay are too familiar to Americans with older family members. It’s a sad but inevitable reality of aging and an inevitable precursor ultimately to death.
My elderly grandfather could be lovingly teaching me how to care for animals, then suddenly start yelling as if I was a lazy hired hand. He didn’t need a podium.
Ten minutes later, the old man would do what his wife told him to do, approach me to apologize sheepishly. “Your grandma says I spoke mean to you. I’m sorry.” He had no memory of the outburst.
It’s all heartbreaking to countenance, even now. But Grandpa was a farmer of chickens and asparagus who liked Labatt’s beer, and, in those distant days, there was no such thing as nuclear-launch codes.
Some Democrats recently attempted to attack Trump as too old, too. Trump is 77, 3.56 years (1,302 days) younger than Biden.
There are no health guarantees in anyone’s life, especially in the so-called “golden years,” a time of life that a doctor of mine once characterized as “better living through chemistry.”
But personalities aside, any sentient, honest voter comparing Biden and Trump on a public stage would come away with radically different opinions about their ability to serve as president for four more years. You might dislike Trump, but he plays crowds well, while Biden has continued speaking even while music was playing him off.
And all this sets aside Biden's policies, such as killing energy independence, stoking inflation, and allowing an open southern border, admitting millions of illegals.
Trump does have his own campaign challenges that are not going away. He has four grand jury indictments engineered and synchronized by members of a political party that has sought to undermine him since the start of his political career in 2015.
Trump’s trials just happen to have been scheduled during next year’s peak campaign season.
The good news for Trump is that going after him legally so hard with some flimsy charges, coming after two grandiose impeachments and the broad hoax of Russian collusion, actually has generated sympathetic surges of campaign donations and increased his poll approval numbers.
At the moment, polls show Trump far ahead of GOP competitors for the nomination next summer. It’s still early, of course. National polls can be indicative of strength in a general election race.
But they give misleading impressions of strength in individual primaries.
The nominee will be determined by those primary votes and a caucus in unrepresentative but very prominent and influential early-voting states like Iowa, New Hampshire, and Nevada.
There, fewer polls show Trump still as the front-runner, but by considerably smaller margins than his national poll leads.
His opponents like Nikki Haley, Ron DeSantis, and Chris Christie are quietly focusing there in the kind of retail living room/coffee shop politics that the former president has disdained.
Media do, too. That’s how they got shocked and failed their readers when segregationist George Wallace easily won Michigan’s 1972 Democrat primary with a majority in a four-person field, and an unknown governor named Jimmy Carter easily captured his party's Iowa caucus four years later on his way to the nomination and White House.
As recognition of this grassroots danger, Trump just added four Iowa visits to his calendar next month. But he has also decided again to skip this Wednesday's GOP debate on FoxBusiness from the Reagan Presidential Library.
This gives the other Republicans another golden opportunity to gain much-needed recognition outside the Trump media shadow before the largest audience they’ve ever had.
