Poor oul’ Joe had to go and this was clear long before his disastrous televised debate with Trump on June 27, so that it took 25 days for that reality to sink in is baffling.
As far back as April 2023 when Biden visited Ireland, I highlighted the flawed attempts by his entourage to portray the octogenarian as fit and full of vigour. They did this by having the president do what I called ‘the Biden shuffle’ when, for no discernible reason, he’d break into a faltering jog when in public. Instead of vitality what it demonstrated was someone trying too hard, which only accentuated his age and infirmity.
I mentioned this when asked to comment on the presidential visit to Ireland on Channel 4 News, saying that I prayed they didn’t make Joe jog as the grass was always wet in Ireland and I didn’t want the infamous grassy knoll of Dallas to be mirrored by the grassy banks of Belfast.
In 1776, when delegates gathered in secret for a Constitutional Convention which signed off the four-page document establishing the government of the United States, their overriding concern was to ensure their new nation would never fall under the control of either king or despot.
Given that the average life expectancy at the time was 40 years, it’s not surprising that imposing an upper age limit for the role of president wasn’t a consideration. If they had set a sensible age limit, we would not only have been saved from 81-year-old Biden from running but also 78-year-old Trump - and considering the latter’s authoritarian and anti-democratic rhetoric, this omission could well result in the outcome the constitution was aimed at avoiding, namely a despot president.
Age limits are common in many jobs and professions in the USA, with mandatory retirement ages for airline pilots, air traffic controllers, firefighters and federal and state police officers. And while you must be 21 to legally buy a drink, it’s ludicrous someone can run for president aged 81.
Admittedly, most age limits involve the young, with 18 seen as the age of reason and adulthood in the UK. For instance, it’s illegal here to place a bet or order a drink until you’re 18, and while you can’t vote or get married until the same age, you can join the army and risk death at 16, which would indicate marriage and alcohol are seen as more dangerous than war.
Returning to the case of Joe Biden, his first televised debate with Donald Trump was so awful I still haven’t been able to bring myself to watch it in full.
Until then, what had been backroom whispers about his cognitive decline were now laid bare to the nation and the world. Unable to string a coherent sentence together, Biden wandered into one verbal cul-de-sac after another, his voice tapering off to a whisper. All the while, Trump simply stood by and smirked, aware that all he had to do was facially mirror the shock being felt by the watching audience.
It’s illegal here to place a bet or order a drink until you’re 18, and while you can’t vote or get married until the same age, you can join the army and risk death at 16, which would indicate marriage and alcohol are seen as more dangerous than war
Pundits from all sides of the political divide realised the damage done during that debate pivoted the outcome of the election in Trump’s favour - and then the assassination attempt happened. The image of a bloodied Trump punching the air in defiance whilst shouting, “Fight, fight, fight”, in an instant swept away all his financial corruption and sex scandals.
More than most countries, America as a nation values image every bit as much as ideas, and now they had the image of Trump as the strong alpha male, unbowed - indeed defiant - in the face of mortal danger.
The juxtaposition of that with one of an enfeebled Biden proved impossible to expunge from voters’ memories, for while only three years separate Biden and Trump, the perma-tanned Trump appeared decades younger than the waxen-faced Biden.
Biden’s anointing of Vice President Kamala Harris as his chosen successor is what Americans call a ‘no-brainer’. Having already faced the spotlight of media scrutiny as VP, the Democrats know she will survive that spotlight becoming a laser beam as she now runs for the presidency.
We can but wonder what the Founding Fathers would think of today’s candidates. I’d suggest that considering 41 of the 56 delegates who signed the Declaration of Independence were slave owners, they would probably be more alarmed at Kamala Harris being a black female president than Donald Trump being an orange sociopathic liar, thief, adulterer and potential dictator.
