25 November 22
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Hate to drag you from leftover turkeys back into the world of politics (I’ll refrain from the obvious bad joke here), but the question is growing louder about whether Joe Biden should run again for president.
Having turned 80 last Sunday, Biden is already the oldest president in American history. Concerns about his age top the list for why Democratic voters want the party to find an alternative for 2024.
But the question “should Joe Biden run again?” is really four different questions:
(1) Has he done a good job so far? (Answer: By-and-large, yes.)
(2) Should he run again if he wants to? (Almost certainly.)
(3) Will he be the best candidate to beat Trump or whomever else Republicans are likely to nominate? (Maybe, but let’s discuss.)
(4) Would he be a capable leader of the United States when he’s in his mid-80s? (Possible, but unlikely.)
As I’ve said before, I don’t think concern about Biden’s age reflects an “ageist” prejudice against those who have reached such withering heights so much as an understanding that people in their 80s do wither.
I speak with a certain authority. I’m 76. I feel fit, I swing dance and salsa, and can do 20 pushups in a row. Yet I confess to a certain loss of, shall we say, fizz.
Joe Biden could easily make it until 86, when he’d conclude his second term. After all, it’s now thought a bit disappointing if a person dies before 85. (My mother passed at 86, my father two weeks before his 102nd birthday, so I’m hoping for the best, genetically speaking.)
Three score and ten is the number of years of life set out in the Bible. Modern technology and Big Pharma should add at least a decade and a half. Beyond this is an extra helping. “After 80, it’s gravy,” my father used to say.
Joe will be on the cusp of the gravy train.
Where will this end? There’s only one possibility. As the old saying goes, “we won’t get out of this alive.”
That reality occurs to me with increasing frequency. I find myself reading the obituary pages with ever greater curiosity about how long they lasted and what brought them down. I remember a New Yorker cartoon in which an older reader of the obituaries sees headlines that read only “Older Than Me” or “Younger Than Me.”
Yet most of the time I forget my age. The other day after lunch with some of my graduate students, I caught our reflection in a store window and for an instant wondered about the identity of that little old man in our midst.
It’s not death that’s the worrying thing about a second Biden term. It’s the dwindling capacities that go with aging. “Bodily decrepitude,” said Yeats, “is wisdom.” I have accumulated somewhat more of the former than the latter, but Biden seems fairly spry (why do I feel I have to add “for someone his age?”).
I still have my teeth, in contrast to my grandfather whom I vividly recall storing his choppers in a glass next to his bed, and have so far steered clear of heart attack or stroke (I pray I’m not tempting fate by my stating this fact). But I’ve lived through several kidney stones and a few unexplained fits of epilepsy in my late thirties. I’ve had both hips replaced. And my hearing is for shit. Even with hearing aids, I have a hard time understanding someone talking to me in a noisy restaurant.
You’d think that the sheer market power of 60 million boomers losing their hearing would be enough to generate at least one set of quiet restaurants. But no — restaurants seem to be loud as ever. Getting louder, in fact.
When I get together with old friends, our first ritual is an “organ recital” — how’s your back? knee? heart? hip? shoulder? eyesight? hearing? prostate? hemorrhoids? digestion?
The recital can run (and ruin) an entire lunch.
The question my friends and I jokingly (and brutishly) asked one other in college— “getting much?”—now refers not to sex but to sleep. I don’t know anyone over 75 who sleeps through the night. When he was president, Bill Clinton prided himself on getting only about four hours. But he was in his forties then. (I also recall cabinet meetings where he dozed off.) How does Biden manage?
My memory for names is horrible. (I once asked Ted Kennedy how he recalled names and he advised that if a man is over 50, just ask “how’s the back?” and he’ll think you know him.)
I often can’t remember where I put my wallet and keys or why I’ve entered a room. And certain proper nouns have disappeared altogether. Even when rediscovered, they have a diabolical way of disappearing again. Biden’s secret service detail can worry about his wallet and he’s got a teleprompter for wayward nouns, but I’m sure he’s experiencing some diminution in the memory department.
I have lost much of my enthusiasm for travel and feel, as did Philip Larkin, that I would like to visit China, but only on the condition that I could return home that night. Air Force One makes this possible under most circumstances. If not, it has a first-class bedroom and personal bathroom, so I don’t expect Biden’s trips are overly taxing.
I’m told that after the age of 60, one loses half an inch of height every five years. This doesn’t appear to be a problem for Biden but it presents a challenge for me, considering that at my zenith I didn’t quite make it to five feet. If I live as long as my father did, I may vanish.
Another diminution I’ve noticed is tact. A few days ago, I gave the finger to a driver who passed me recklessly on the highway. These days, giving the finger to a stranger is itself a reckless act.
I’m also noticing I have less patience, perhaps because of an unconscious “use by” timer that’s now clicking away. Increasingly I wonder why I’m wasting time with this or that buffoon. I’m less tolerant of long waiting lines, automated phone menus, and Republicans.
Cicero claimed “older people who are reasonable, good-tempered, and gracious bear aging well. Those who are mean-spirited and irritable will be unhappy at every stage of their lives.” Easy for Cicero to say. He was forced into exile and murdered at the age of 63, his decapitated head and right hand hung up in the Forum by order of the notoriously mean-spirited and irritable Marcus Antonius.
How the hell does Biden maintain tact or patience when he has to deal with Mitch McConnell? Or Joe Manchin? And very soon with Kevin McCarthy, for crying out loud?
The style sections of the papers tell us that the 70s are the new 50s. Septuagenarians are supposed to be fit and alert, exercise like mad, have rip-roaring sex, and party until dawn.
Rubbish. Inevitably, things begin falling apart. My aunt, who lived far into her nineties, told me “getting old isn’t for sissies.” Toward the end she repeated that phrase every two to three minutes.
Am I repeating myself?
I’m doing videos on TikTok and Snapchat, but when my students talk about Ariana Grande or Selena Gomez or Jared Leto, I don’t have clue who they’re talking about (and frankly don’t care). And I find myself using words –- “hence,” “utmost,” “therefore,” “tony,” “brilliant” — that my younger colleagues find charmingly old-fashioned. If I refer to “Rose Marie Woods” or “Jackie Robinson” or “Ed Sullivan” or “Mary Jo Kopechne,” they’re bewildered. The culture has flipped in so many ways. When I was seventeen, I could go into a drugstore and confidently ask for a package of Luckies and nervously whisper a request for condoms. Now it’s precisely the reverse. (I stopped smoking long ago.)
Santayana said the reason that old people have nothing but foreboding about the future is that they cannot imagine a world that’s good without themselves in it. I don’t share that view. To the contrary, I think my generation — including Bill and Hillary, George W., Trump, Newt Gingrich, Clarence Thomas, Chuck Schumer, and Biden – have fucked it up royally. The world will probably be better without us. (On the other hand, I think Nancy Pelosi has done a wonderful job.)
Joe, please don’t run. (But if you do, I’ll be 100 percent behind you.)
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