Joe Biden is too young

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As President Joe Biden stood in front of the nation to deliver his State of the Union address Thursday evening, I felt a persistent gnawing. Sure, he was forceful and focused and made his hecklers look like idiots, but there was still something missing. And then it hit me: He wasn’t covered in dust from spending years locked in an attic.

Biden started off his address by referencing one given by Franklin D. Roosevelt in January 1941. That was a full 20 months before the tiny Robinette bounced into this world, and we’re supposed to believe he understood the gravity of Roosevelt’s speech about the rise of Hitler and creep of fascism? Please. Pics or it didn’t happen.

It’s all well and good to have a president who can tell you about yesterday, but what about a president who could tell what it was like the day the Emancipation Proclamation was signed? Or seeing a Model T Ford wobble down the street for the first time? Furthermore, where was he when Paul Revere exclaimed, “The British are coming!”?

We look for a president who has it all: intelligence; experience; style. But what if we asked for more? What if we demanded a time traveler who has witnessed every major historical event since the inception of this great nation so that he may govern with firsthand experience?

I don’t think it’s too much to ask that we elect someone who, when a magician cuts them in half you can see hundreds of rings like a rotted out oak stump. The modern approach to aging is hurting us in this goal: It used to be that a 40-year-old was a withered old crone who wore his life on his face and anticipated death by cholera. That crone had seen things. 

But now with the advent of Botox and fillers, it’s impossible to know who watched the Gettysburg Address IRL and who watched an AI-generated Lincoln deliver it on TikTok. Time may be a flat circle, but it’s one whose edges have been smoothed beyond recognition. If we continue to FaceTune time, how will we be able to identify the most capable president?

At one point in his address, Biden tried to trick us into thinking he’d seen enough of our history to meaningfully govern. He told the audience gathered before him, as well as the 32 million watching at home, “I know I may not look like it, but I’ve been around a while. When you get to be my age, certain things become clearer than ever.” 

Spoken like someone desperate to prove he remembers his mom sitting around the gramophone gabbing with her girlies. You know what’s not clear, Joe? Where you were on the first Thanksgiving. As Senator Katie Britt breathed out in her SOTU response, “We see you.”

“My fellow Americans, the issue facing our nation isn’t how old we are; it’s how old are our ideas,” Biden said as his thunderous address neared its close. Methinks thou doth protest too much, Joe. Why are you trying to distract from the issue of age? Why are you trying to make people believe that you’re old enough to run this country with the foresight of a grizzled Civil War General? How can you understand the national hunger crisis when you weren’t even around for the Donner party?

Real political prognosticators know that when Biden recently mistakenly referred to Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi as the president of Mexico, he was doing so to make a point. A person as young as Biden could never make that kind of blunder.

Some have pointed out that if Biden is re-elected this fall, he’ll be 86 by the time he serves his full second term. You know what’s cooler than 86? 186. 

As British transphobe Helen Lewis remarked in a recent column, “Biden is 81 already—the oldest person ever to occupy the White House—and is seeking another four-year term. He is older than George W. Bush, who stopped being president in 2008, and older than Bill Clinton, who gave up the job in 2000. He is older than the hovercraft, the barcode, and the Breathalyzer.”

Don’t threaten us with a good time, Helen. Call us when we have a candidate older than the locomotive.

Though Ezra Klein is prepared to call Biden’s post-SOTU bounce “a comeback,” we really can’t be too sure. Unless you’ve had to personally rebuild from the Great Depression, it’s hard to imagine really understanding what it means to overcome economic adversity. It’s one thing to read about it; it’s quite another to live it.

In closing, I think we have to take a long hard look at our current president and Democratic candidate in November. Do we really want someone closer in age to the Vice President and Speaker of the House sitting behind him Thursday night, or closer to Attila the Hun? 

Voters: The choice is yours.