Dan McLaughlin writes for the New York Post about the downside of having an octogenarian president.
In case you haven’t noticed, Joe Biden is old. Really old.
How old is our president, who will turn 82 shortly after Election Day 2024 and wants to keep the job until he’s 86?
One of Queen Victoria’s children was still alive when he was born.
He was a teenager when the last veteran of the Civil War died.
He served alongside six men in the Senate who were born before 1900.
He spent 31 years as a colleague of a man who ran for president against Harry Truman. …
… In 1972, Biden argued to Delaware voters that his 63-year-old opponent was too old to stay in the Senate. When Biden was sworn in as president 49 years later, he was already the oldest man ever to hold the job.
The years haven’t been easy on Biden. His decline is plainly visible. He shuffles like an old man and trips frequently, resulting in a scary fall at the Air Force Academy graduation this weekend. He often seems confused in public, needing to be led where he’s going. He speaks tentatively.
He’s a far cry from the old Biden, whose gift of blarney let him ramble endlessly at Senate hearings and shout down Paul Ryan in their 2012 vice-presidential debate.
On the campaign trail in 2019, Biden’s temper was noticeably short, leading to him snapping at voters on multiple occasions, even insulting one man’s weight. It was a godsend for him when COVID allowed him to spend most of 2020 hiding in his basement.
At press conferences, Biden has often been seen holding note cards indicating he knows who will ask each question and what it is. He rarely grants interviews where he can be challenged; he has refused to even sit down with The New York Times.
