Biden, Trump Age Problems Dissected

Biden has an age problem and Trump doesn’t because Biden dodders and Trump doesn’t. At his best Biden looks frail, whereas Trump is robust and noisy. Trump’s decay shows up in mental functioning, but when he displays it what we see is a big man with powerful lungs. If he talks nonsense, what else is new? Trump’s a known chowderhead, so his recent malfunctions—the Sioux City/Sioux Falls stuff, the belief that Obama’s still president—have abundant cover with which to blend. At least he doesn’t look like he’ll drop in his tracks. He might drop, because we’ve seen clips, but his standard TV sightings don’t inspire much hope. Whereas looking at Biden you think about a wrong breeze. Brisk one at an angle and maybe his heels go over his head.

The softening of Trump’s already overtaxed brain may eventually gain traction as an issue. But it’ll take a long string of blunders, plus a legion of people to harp on the difference between these blunders and the already familiar results of the MAGA chief’s longstanding addiction to crudity, ignorance, hype, and spasmodic but perpetual free association. The work ahead seems formidable. We only know that he’ll do his part.

Dogleg. I knew a guy who always bitched about politics and politicians. It was his thing, the spice of his intellectual life, the savor of his being. Talk to him and you had to hear about it. At least you did if, like me, you cared about elections and supported one party over another. No rational thought went into his blatting.

I once told him about Obama’s peacemaking beer summit, staged after the then-president criticized a Boston police incident, and how Obama included Biden in the photo-op so the cameras wouldn’t show a white cop outnumbered by a black president and a black professor. The guy’s face jerked; an idea had rattled into his head. “That shows you!” he said. “A politician.” He explained that Obama would bend to racist voters. I explained back that if the voters were racist, it wouldn’t be the politician who was the big problem.

To do the fellow credit, he took this idea on board, something evidenced by a rapid collision of brow and eyes as his face bunched up. His gaze fell, plummeted. He seemed to have encountered pain. Then he shook his head free and proceeded with life.

I saw a similar rallying by a man who didn’t know who Chandler Bing was. The knowledge gap didn’t matter, but when I said Bing was a character on Friends, the fellow went Little Lord Fauntleroy. He prissed up his mouth and pronounced he’d never seen Friends. Well, I said, the comic book writer in question was a fan and had based a particular character on this Friends actor, the one who played Chandler Bing. The fellow looked like someone had walked up to him and shown him his own underwear. For Fauntleroy and I had been discussing quite a good comic book writer, a person of respect. This person liked Friends, so a gulf had opened in ordinary reality. The fellow looked at the gulf and sagged with confusion. Then he shook his head.

I call it the life force.