OPINION:
“Age is just a number,” actor Joan Collins, now 90, mused when she was 82. “It’s totally irrelevant unless, of course, you happen to be a bottle of wine.”
That’s because most wines improve with age.
We would revise and extend the “Dynasty” star’s remark to add: “It’s totally irrelevant unless, of course, you happen to be president of the United States.”
President Biden is showing every bit of his 81 years, and he most definitely is not improving with age — first lady Jill Biden’s protestations last week on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” to the contrary notwithstanding.
Mrs. Biden is understandably the biggest cheerleader for her husband to run for a second term.
Mr. Biden’s physical infirmity and diminished cognitive mental acuity were again on painful display at a Jan. 12 campaign stop in Emmaus, Pennsylvania, outside of Allentown, where he spent about 2½ hours at the Nowhere Coffee Co.
The Nowhere Man from Delaware via Scranton, Pennsylvania, moved stiffly and made aimless chit-chat with the owners and employees.
“My name is Joe Biden. I work for the government in the Senate,” Mr. Biden told the java joint’s patrons. There was just one problem with that: Mr. Biden hasn’t been a senator since 2008, fully 15 years ago.
Then there was this exchange with reporters:
Question: “Are you willing to call the Houthis a terrorist group, sir?”
Mr. Biden: “I think they are.”
But the unasked follow-up question should have been: “Why, just weeks into your presidency, in February 2021, did you remove the Iran-backed Yemeni rebels from the foreign terrorist organization and specially designated global terrorist lists that your predecessor (and possible successor), Donald Trump, placed the Houthis on?”
The reporters failed to point that out — assuming they even knew it themselves.
Then, when asked whether the U.S. and British airstrikes on strategic Houthi targets in Yemen had been successful, the president served up this word salad: “Yes, it was very … I don’t think there’s any civilian casualties. That’s another reason why it’s a success. So, look, we’re going to get a chance to talk, apparently, at the, after the fire station. So, rather than … by the way, does anybody want a coffee? It’s on me.”
The president’s increasing incoherence is such an obvious political liability that nervous Democrats are beginning to say the quiet part out loud.
“I would think twice about it,” Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois replied when asked about the prospect of Mr. Biden debating former President Donald Trump this fall. But the No. 2 Senate Democrat couched his answer not by saying the president isn’t up to the challenge but by asserting that agreeing to the quadrennial tradition of presidential debates would be “just an opportunity for [Mr. Trump] to display his extremism.”
In like fashion, Sen. Chris Coons, Delaware Democrat, spun the case for not debating by saying there was “a pretty strong case for not dignifying [Mr. Trump] as a candidate by sharing a debate stage.”
But Jill Biden, swatting softball questions from “Morning Joe” co-host Mika Brzezinski, said the president’s age is an asset, not a liability.
“He’s wise. He has wisdom,” she said.
Ms. Brzezinski noted that the president would be 86 at the end of a second term, asking the first lady whether she was at all worried about his age and health.
“Can he do it?” she asked.
“He can do it,” the first lady replied. “And I see Joe every day. I see him out, traveling around this country. I see his vigor, I see his energy, I see his passion every single day.”
But when some of us see Mr. Biden, we’re reminded of Haley Joel Osment’s line in the 1999 film “The Sixth Sense”: “I see dead people … walking around like regular people.”
A bit more charitably, the Trump campaign on Jan. 11 rolled out a hilarious attack ad, likening the Biden White House to a retirement home.
“At White House Senior Living, our residents feel right at home,” the ad’s narrator says. “Our vibrant facility offers delightful activities and outings, round-the-clock professional care and exquisite house-made meals.”
The accompanying video footage shows the president toting a beach chair at the seashore and the first lady helping the president put on his jacket and then reminding him he had been eating a lot of ice cream over the year-end holidays.
The 30-second ad’s walk-off line: “White House Senior Living, where residents feel like presidents.”
Curiously, however, what we haven’t heard despite Mr. Biden’s countless instances of verbal rambling and confused onstage ambling, indicative of declining mental acuity, a call for him to submit to cognitive tests like those demanded of Mr. Trump for four years by then-Yale forensic psychiatrist Bandy X. Lee and others. Nor have we heard calls for Mr. Biden’s removal from office on the basis of incapacity under the 25th Amendment, as was suggested for Mr. Trump.
That brings us back to Ms. Collins’ observation about age being just a number unless you’re talking about wine. If Mr. Biden were a wine, he would likely be MD 20/20, Thunderbird or Two-Buck Chuck.
• Peter Parisi, a former editor for The Washington Times, is an editor with The Daily Signal of The Heritage Foundation. The Heritage Foundation is cited for identification purposes only. The views expressed in this piece are the author’s own and do not reflect any institutional position of The Heritage Foundation.
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