Goodnight, Joe—It’s Time to Go!

​So here’s the deal. Number 1, you’re too old. Number 2, you’re too old. And number 3 . . . Wait! I forget what Number 3 is. Joe, I hate to share it with you, especially as one of your long-time, die-heart supporters, but last night, June 27th, you proved to America and the world that you just don’t have it anymore. We were hoping for the fire of your State of the Union speech, but that’s not what we got. Your good days are now behind you. Time to go to Rehoboth Beach, kick back, and reflect on all your victories in a long and storied carrier as an elected official and public servant on the national stage. If you insist on going forward, Trump will have you for breakfast just as he had you for dinner last night. Despite all the rah-rah online support the official Democrat machine is offering about how you really gave it to the Donald, the reality is you did give it to him—the November election, that is. True, you did get a little better as the night wore on, still hoarse but your points were somewhat more understandable if not exactly harpoons to the heart of your opponent. For his part Trump offered his well-rehearsed Maga lines, two-thirds lies and one-third exaggerations. But—and here’s the point—in terms of energy and control, he seemed not four years younger but twenty-four: the oldest son arguing with a doddering grandpa of a father. It doesn’t matter if what he said was a jumble of ad-hominem barbs. Truth be told, you got in your share too, although given the low energy level of your voice, they sounded almost like compliments. It seemed a contest for who was the worst American President ever!

Then, the debate had hardly ended when your public-relations team started putting out Trumpian-style lies about how you had really given it to that phoney, how you had won bigtime, and—by the way—please donate. Yuck! Even the ever-loyal Dr. Jill went online to congratulate you on a great job! As a retired university professor and a former debater I’d have to give your performance a D, and that would be a small act of generosity on my part.

Now some of my readers may be tempted to accuse me of ageism. Lento, lento, my friends. Besides being a fellow Scorpio to President Joe, I am three years and 14 days his senior. I can only stand in wonder at his bravado—his chutzpah—at wanting to seek a second term. To be sure, the June 28th New York Times republished opinion writer Frank Bruni’s March 28th 2024 piece titled “The Overlooked Truth about Biden’s Age.” Bruni’s main point was that a President is not a solo act but depends to a great degree on his (or someday, we hope, her) team. And here I have to congratulate President Biden on having assembled a talented, diverse group of cabinet leaders and individuals lower down the hierarchy who have made his many against-the-stream achievements possible. Clearly no leader is a solo act. Such things are the stuff of action movies and cartoons.

So, dear President Joe, I hope your close advisors and friends will prevail on you to step aside, sooner rather than later, so that a younger Democrat with star-power and the energy that goes with fewer years can take over. Kamela Harris to the contrary notwithstanding, my dream team would be Gavin Newsom, the experienced, charismatic Governor of California, paired with Gretchen Witmer, the Governor of Michigan, as his running mate. For five-and-a-half years after all, Newsom has run the 5th largest economy in the world if California were a country, and Witmer has successfully shown courage, smarts, and strategic thinking in leading her state. It will be interesting to see what happens. At this point, all I can say is “May the Force be with us!”