Much has been made, and continues to be made, about 81-year-old President Joe Biden’s advanced age and related optics: awkward miscues and slower walking. The occasional stutter has been with him since childhood. Some, of course, would call it an inevitable trade-off for a half century of public service, life experience and accumulated wisdom. Others, of course, would say, typically in partisan taunts, that the U.S. just can’t afford an octogenarian president.
Many who say that, however, would, ironically and unconscionably, prefer a candidate who would be only three years younger come November, as well as manifestly unhinged, unethical and criminally indicted.
Biden still checks important boxes, even if he isn’t a charismatic, next-gen progressive. He actually reads and understands his briefings; has relevant knowledge of actual facts, from the constitutional to the geopolitical; maintains emotional regulation; and surrounds himself with experienced, non-democracy-threatening, Administration appointees—not mere minions. To Biden, “America First” means American democracy as a foremost priority–not a nativist ploy to a voter base.
But as Republicans continue to rally ‘round GaffeGate, “Sleepy Joe” slurs and Trump rants at his Mussolini rallies, their selective lens obviously isn’t fazed by Trump’s dual decline, both mental and moral. For his cult followers, being an outlandish, often incoherent, pathological personality is not perceived as weakness, but as celebrity charisma. And since nobody is objective about their cult leader, Trump confusing Joe Biden and Barack Obama, Nikki Haley and Nancy Pelosi, George W. Bush and Jeb Bush, World War II and World War III, Sioux City, IA. and Sioux Falls, S.D. is not some cognitive concern for hardcore Trumpsters.
His moral and ethical failings have been obvious for as long as Trump has been in the public eye—from fraudster to sex offender to birtherism founder to insurrection lodestar and leader. Now add intimations of mental decline. America deserves better than an existentially threatening, 90-felony-indictment presidential candidate—even if the Trump base doesn’t.