The Week: Voters Won’t Ignore Biden’s Age

• What a pity that none of President Biden’s periods of extended, brilliant, off-the-cuff lucidity is on camera.

• The Wall Street Journal reported that Joe Biden is too old. The piece had the usual caveats: It limited its critique to “behind closed doors”; it used the euphemisms “slipping” and “appears slower”; it contained the usual Democratic Party insistences that Biden “remains a sharp and vigorous leader” and that any suggestions to the contrary must be the product of “partisan politics.” To anyone with eyes, however, it rang clearly and obviously true. Five years ago, one might have had a shot at convincing the public that Joe Biden had always been like this. Now, the exercise is futile. President Biden is weak; he is slow; he is confused—and these shortcomings are the product not of a boyhood stutter, or of an unfair press, but of his advanced age. At 81, he is already the oldest person ever to have served as president. Were he to win a second term, he could continue in the role until he is 86. It is, no doubt, mightily inconvenient for the Democrats that Biden is determined to do just that, but that does not make it incumbent upon the voting public to pretend otherwise.

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• What a pity that none of President Biden’s periods of extended, brilliant, off-the-cuff lucidity is on camera.

• The Wall Street Journal reported that Joe Biden is too old. The piece had the usual caveats: It limited its critique to “behind closed doors”; it used the euphemisms “slipping” and “appears slower”; it contained the usual Democratic Party insistences that Biden “remains a sharp and vigorous leader” and that any suggestions to the contrary must be the product of “partisan politics.” To anyone with eyes, however, it rang clearly and obviously true. Five years ago, one might have had a shot at convincing the public that Joe Biden had always been like this. Now, the exercise is futile. President Biden is weak; he is slow; he is confused—and these shortcomings are the product not of a boyhood stutter, or of an unfair press, but of his advanced age. At 81, he is already the oldest person ever to have served as president. Were he to win a second term, he could continue in the role until he is 86. It is, no doubt, mightily inconvenient for the Democrats that Biden is determined to do just that, but that does not make it incumbent upon the voting public to pretend otherwise.