What’s your stand on Taylor Swift and her love life?
You don't need information to opine.
How about Joe Biden’s age and competence?
Same deal.
This is a matter we need to think through, carefully. But we are not thinking at all.
The stakes?
Another Trump presidency.
That would be a policy catastrophe (more tax cuts for the uber rich and dismantling the EPA, for example).
It would be a governmental catastrophe – government by whim and revenge; fools and sycophants in high office replacing the able; allies alienated. Chaos.
And it would be a constitutional catastrophe.
We know all this from Mr. Trump’s term in office.
We don’t know if Mr. Biden has serious memory issues. (Most factotums at the Department of Justice are not neurologists.)
Or if Mr. Trump does.
And we ought to know. There ought to be a full cognitive health exam and disclosure for every candidate.
Suppose one of the candidates, or any candidate in any year, had early Alzhimers, Parkinson’s or Multiple Sclerosis?
We don’t know if Kamala Harris is as “not ready for prime time,” as we are told.
And we don’t know much about age and disability.
Old people do forget their keys. They do get dates mixed up. Sometimes they live too much in the past. They can slip from this general state of oldness into full-throttle senility. And it can happen fast.
Moreover, it can happen at 70 to some, while some 90-year olds are sharp as daggers.
We don’t really know much about age. We know even less clearly how to think about it.
But we do know this: What some old people lose in small matters, they more than make up for in large matters.
They become calmer and wiser than the rest of us. And, by virtue of living and working long, they know more.
This is why the later work of a musician, a painter, or a novelist, is often deeper than earlier work.
We don’t think that way about politicians because we tend to measure politicians by verbal dexterity. But speaking does not equal governing. Speaking well is useful, but constitutes maybe 30 percent of the job.
I would take Dwight Eisenhower or Jerry Ford over John F. Kennedy or Barack Obama any day.
When Ike was president, they said he was vague and confused.
The press portrayed Ford as a bumbler. He was anything but. He was far more competent than Jimmy Carter – a good man who could not handle the presidency.
Donald Trump is a bad man who cannot handle the presidency.
This is something we know.
We do not know about his cognitive health. But we know he cannot do that job.
And we also know that he will say or do anything to get that job back.
And that, by his own testimony, he has little respect for the Constitution that presidents swear to uphold.
We do not know if Mr. Biden sometimes forgets the year his son died. But we may be sure he remembers what his son and the rest of his family went through. And we know Mr. Biden understands and respects our system, and can do things like rebuilding our infrastructure or the NATO alliance.
And when Mr. Biden reacts to Mr. Trump’s statement that Vladimir Putin should feel free to attack one of our NATO allies, by saying: ”For God’s sake it’s dumb. It’s shameful. It’s dangerous. It’s un-American,” the president seems both clear headed and worthy. Much like Harry Truman, another mostly ineloquent man who could strip away the cant.
Would a younger Democrat, like Gavin Newsom, have a better chance against Trump?
We don’t know that either. Possibly. The voters have evidently concluded that Joe Biden is too old.
But it is a shallow, half-baked conclusion.
Mr. Biden IS old, and fragile. He has a speech impediment.
He’s also a good president. And those are rare.
All presidents err and ultimately fail. Ford presided over the fall of Vietnam. Lyndon Johnson built up the war in Vietnam and would not give it up. Biden’s exit from Afghanistan was a disaster.
But Mr. Trump presents the possibility, not just of err or folly, but rending the constitutional fabric.
It is insanely reckless and disrespectful for his party to be on the brink of renominating him for the presidency.
One can understand nervous Democrats who say: You are doing a Ruth Bader Ginsburg. By staying too long you hurt your cause.
And also Biden fans who say: Churchill, Ike, or Jack Kennedy, impaired, were better than the alternatives.
I feel sure only of this: We are assuming that we know things we do not know and talking about things we do not fully understand – like aging.
I am sorry to say this also includes the presidency. Blame the press, in part. Blame the people more.
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Another well written article. So much food for thought. How to groom, not a good word for the responsibilities of the office. We must start a process early to remove the Age factor. and this comment is from an 80year old. Not just mental acuity but physical also. We must learn from this situation and do our best to not repeat it. It is especially difficult when the Senate and Congress are abdicating their responsibilities to help with the battle at hand. If the 435 could remember WHY they were elected that would be a big help. They are looking for Power and Control and they have apparently succeeded.
Great piece! My only comment is on blaming the Afghanistan pullout disaster on Biden. My understanding of that is as follows:
> One of the new leaders of the Taliban is Abdul Ghani Baradar. Mr. Baradar was released from years in prison in Pakistan at the insistence of Donald Trump, who then, in February 2020, negotiated and made an agreement with him directly, no Afghan government officials were allowed, to pull out all U.S. troops from Afghanistan by May 1, 2021.
BTW - Trump forced the Afghan government to release 5,000 Taliban prisoners who then went back to fighting for the Taliban.
And Trump made it impossible to not withdraw our troops from Afghanistan as he often boasted.
When Biden took over on January 20, 2021, they soon learned that the Trump administration had no plan for the withdrawal of our troops or the many Afghanis who had worked with and supported us in the fight against the Taliban. Biden and his administration and the military were able to delay the departure enough to, at least, get a plan in place prior to the pullout, without which the pullout would have been even more of a disaster than it was.
Yes, the withdrawal was a mess but we were able to get our troops out and over 70,000 Afghanis who had helped us; - - - thanks to Biden and his administration we got our troops and 70,000 more Afghanis out of Afghanistan than Trump and his corrupt administration had planned for.
Just imagine if Trump had allowed Mohammad Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai, the Afghan president, to participate in the negotiations so that he had some skin in the game. Perhaps he would have stayed and led the Afghan army against the Taliban, an army of over 300,00 and well equipped with American weapons, instead of fleeing. He would have been in a much better position than Zelensky having a well-equipped army of over 300,000, against a ragtag Taliban.
Just my thoughts.
Take care.