"Old Age Is a Shipwreck"

On Joe Biden's mental decline and what it means

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Note: I launched Un-Woke in Indiana in April 2022 and to date I’ve published well over four hundred articles on this that, and the other thing. The other day I went back to take a look at the pieces I published here in the early days, when I had but a handful of subscribers. This one struck me as relevant to the present moment, and I’m republishing it for the benefit of current subscribers. Except for a few corrected typos, it stands as originally written.

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It should not be politically objectionable to point out that Joe Biden is unfit to serve as the President of the United States. The reality of his cognitive decline has become more and more obvious with the passage of time—alarmingly so, given the foreign and domestic challenges facing the nation just now.

But what’s to be done? While Democrats and Republicans agree about almost nothing these days, they’re probably of one mind that Vice President Kamala Harris must in no circumstances be permitted to ascend to the presidency. So we’re stuck with Biden and all we can do is hope that his mental deterioration does not result in disaster.

Apropos of Marshal Petain, Charles de Gaulle remarked that “old age is a shipwreck.” This is only too true. As we age, we lose a step, as the saying goes. I’m 72 and sense this in myself. Sometimes a name or a word takes its time being recalled, sometimes I mislay my phone or my vehicle keys, sometimes when I’m tired I have trouble concentrating on what I’m reading. With the passage of time it happens to us all, though not at the same rate or to the same extent. My grandfather Gregg’s mind was still sharp when he died at the age of eighty-three, as was my mother’s when she passed away at the great old age of ninety-three. But it seems that Joe Biden’s decline has been more precipitous. Or perhaps it’s just more noticeable, since he occupies a position that keeps him in the spotlight.

It’s a remarkable fact that with the exception of Jimmy Carter, our living former presidents are younger than the incumbent. Joe Biden took office at the about the same age that Ronald Reagan had reached by the end of his second term. I think it’s fair to say that Biden would never have been elected president save for a remarkable combination of circumstances: the election of Donald Trump in 2016 and COVID-19. The pandemic made obvious Trump’s unfitness for the presidency, while allowing Biden to market himself as the experienced, moderate, steady hand who’d restore normalcy in Washington DC. This was a dubious claim, given the candidate’s lack of principle, his mendacity, and his oft-demonstrated instinct for the wrong position on just about every issue of consequence.

Luckily for him, the pandemic enabled Biden to hide out in his basement, his staff ensuring that the media’s access to him was limited. Thus he received little of the scrutiny usually meted out to presidential candidates. Most of the focus was on Trump—to his considerable disadvantage—and so Biden prevailed. But no sooner did he occupy the Oval Office than the evidence of his incapacity began to pile up.

It’s probably the case that many of the disasters that have occurred since Biden became president would have happened even if his mind weren’t deteriorating. The man who advised President Obama to pass on the opportunity to liquidate Osama bin Laden might have been expected to oversee something like the Afghanistan debacle. And mere hubris might have led him to swallow the bad advice proffered by a cabal of historians who encouraged him to emulate FDR. Joe Biden has never been known for good judgment; to be rudely frank, he’s always been a fool. But there’s no fool like an old fool and Biden’s mental decline, exacerbated by the stress and pressures of the presidency, has no doubt magnified his many faults.

If this sad story has a silver lining, it’s that Biden’s decline has drawn attention to the fact that America’s governing class is overloaded with elderly men and women. Senator Bernie Sanders, who is said to be considering a run for president in 2024, is 80 years old. Senator Dianne Feinstein of California, aged 88, is reported to be in bad mental shape. Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa, the Republican ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, is up for reelection this year; he’s 88 years old. The Democratic leadership in the House and Senate consists of Speaker Nancy Pelosi, aged 82, and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a (relatively) youthful 71.

Presidents are already term limited; should they also be age limited? And should age limits also be set for members of Congress? I’m of two minds on that score. If, for example, the people of Iowa are disposed to return Senator Grassley to office in November, why should they be denied the opportunity to vote for him? It may be argued that Joe Biden’s election was a fluke and that a similar situation is unlikely to occur again. On the other hand, perhaps it would be prudent to set age limits for the presidency at least, for example stipulating that no one who would reach his seventy-fifth birthday before the end of a first presidential term is eligible to run for that office. After all, there are one hundred senators and 435 members of the House of Representatives, but only one president.

Such a change would of course require a constitutional amendment and given the toxicity of our politics in this day and age, getting such an amendment passed and ratified would be a heavy lift. But thanks to Joe Biden, it’s something we need to think about.