Where is the candidate fit for a T-shirt?

There was a political time when politicians one would consider voting for were so good, so of the moment, that it was a time of T-shirts, of lawn signs, of, I suppose, virtue-signaling.

In 1972, Taylor Phelps tore down a huge — 4 feet by 6 or so — paper banner he’d purloined from the Fabulous Forum in Inglewood after a Barbra Streisand concert in support of the most excellent George McGovern, and he brought it to my parents’ Pasadena kitchen and he tacked it high up on the wall there, where it hung for a year or two, certainly long past the election in which McGovern lost 49 states, including this one.

I suppose he hung it there because his own mother, a liberal but a Republican — imagine! — wouldn’t allow him to tack it up in her kitchen, whereas my mother was the type of peace-firster who voted for Dr. Spock. (She also, as a Southerner who didn’t care for the sanctimoniousness of Jimmy Carter, voted for Gerald Ford. People were a bit more flexible, then.)

Point is, McGovern (and Bobby Kennedy, and Eugene McCarthy) was the kind of Democrat who was entirely T-shirtable, and deserved to be touted in the kitchen.

Whereas Joe Biden, the candidate who almost assuredly will represent the Democrats on the November 2024 ballot?

I don’t recall seeing a single Joe Biden T-shirt, last election or this coming one, at all. If you have seen one in the wild, or sported one, please send pix.

Which is to say that there is not exactly a groundswell of enthusiastic support for the re-election of a president who, if not a great one, has been an acceptable one.

People vote, or were said to vote in the past, on the economy, stupid. And the stock market is nearing a record high. Inflation has cooled rapidly, down to around 3% from highs around 9% post-pandemic after the government spending spree. Unemployment has dropped to 3.7%. Around 200,000 jobs are being “created” each month.

Any incumbent would be touting those simple facts. Yes, there is an immigration crisis on the southern border, but that crisis is caused at least as much by, and probably more by, the failures of leadership of other political presidents around the Americas, by Cuba, by Venezuela and especially by the perfectly awful presidency of Andrés Manuel López Obrador in Mexico.

Any objective American would be pleased to participate in the gains that such economic successes are bringing us all, and to say so.

But there are no objective Americans anymore. We live by the talking points of our tribe. And we just put up with the fact that our two political parties — or the only two parties that matter, barring independent spoilers — are bound and determined to nominate two men who are both, among other problems, too old to send to the White House for another four years.

Many — OK, some — more interesting and vital politicians would be available for the ballot other than the two inevitables.

Sherrod Brown — there’s a T-shirt I would wear. Imagine having a president who, with his B.A. in Russian studies from Yale — where he campaigned for McGovern — could actually understand, and deal with, a menace like Vladimir Putin. He also has master’s degrees in education and in public administration. He’s only 71 — a perfect presidential age.

Or Gretchen Whitmer — a mere 52! Her focus as Michigan’s governor has been on infrastructure and healthcare. She campaigned on the simple theme: “Fix the damn roads!”

But she’s not running.

The two candidates who are running are entirely un-T-shirtable. And yet the other one is so appalling, so dangerous to the nation and the world, that Joe Biden is going to win, anyway.

Larry Wilson is on the Southern California News Group editorial board. lwilson@scng.com.