The problem with old leaders

How much better the world might be without a certain few

The blowback and anger over the question of Joe Biden remaining on top of the Democratic ticket is profound, the problem being both sides have great points.

Biden has been a very successful president who spared us Trump II, and, on good days, he’s as sharp as ever. He still commands the base necessary to beat Trump again, but there are growing indications that it is insufficient to do so. His weakened condition is a HUGE turnoff for men, who are shifting to Trump to a degree (22 percent points advantage) even larger than in previous elections.

Poll after poll show strong majorities of Americans believing Biden is simply too old for the job. After his disastrous, almost heartbreaking debate performance, those majorities are coalescing into a harsher verdict: he needs to step aside and allow for the next generation to emerge.

The same can definitely all be said about the Republicans with Trump, who exhibits plenty of evidence of cognitive decline even as he remains outwardly vigorous. But Trump is untouchable on this front so long as Biden sits atop the Dem ticket.

Let’s be clear: the job is 24/7/365 and very demanding, and it’s patently unfair to run a candidate unlikely to survive the term or — far more likely — retreat into a caregiver presidency (recall Woodrow Wilson’s last year when his spouse ran the White House).

The counter example often cited here: the beloved FDR. But let’s agree that he was a complete one-off, along with WWII. More to the point, his administration allowed for an essentially “open” convention fight in 1944 between incumbent veep Henry Wallace and party conservatives pushing Harry Truman. So, there was a switch at the “top” when the endgame became painfully clear. The Dems were thinking ahead on succession — not dismissing it all as the devious work of pundits.

Still, if FDR, with all his ailments and paralysis, could manage, then why not let Biden get by with — one presumes would be a — walker if Jill wasn’t around to steady him at times?

This week’s Economist cover image

Simply put: America would be so much better off moving past the Boomers in the White House. Their record has been shaky and stunningly self-immolating: Clinton’s terrific economic run ruined by pointless scandals, Bush’s out-of-control and badly run wars, Obama as the calm eye of the storm (see Global Financial Crisis) before yielding to the alt Right/White Christian Nationalist reaction, Trump’s sheer chaos and incompetence, and now Biden’s solid bit (he’s actually a Silent Generation leader, he’s THAT old) that nonetheless ends in political acrimony over the sense among both supporters and opponents that his infirmity and cognitive decline have been systematically kept secret.

This is what angers me greatly — the sheer arrogance of it all, because now we have Biden talking the same only I nonsense that Trump has so long peddled.

I know, I know. FDR’s decline was mega-secret. But we’re not living in that world or those times or that media environment.

And get this: FDR was 63 when he died.