14 October—This is an op-ed essay that appeared in Tuesday’s Republican-American, posted with permission of the author. It alludes to an editorial in that newspaper, but you don’t need to have read the editorial to know what it’s all about. Especially if you’re a grown-up.

Biden’s ultra-maturity and strategic ‘gaffes’

BY PAUL MORDECAI ROSENBERG

The Oct. 7 editorial “The elephant in the room” purports to make the case that President Biden’s advanced years have rendered him a liability — even a danger — to America: “Our country is being led by a near-octogenarian whose cognitive decline is obvious.”

They said that about Ronald Reagan when he was a mere septuagenarian, mangling facts all over the place in campaign debates and in press conferences while in office — before he got the wrecking ball swinging to knock down the Berlin Wall. In his dotage.

As a near-octogenarian myself, only eight days younger than Biden, I must take exception to the editorial’s implication that the president’s well-publicized gaffes are a function of his age. Moreover, I seriously doubt they’re all gaffes.

The Republican-American regularly publishes cogent, often brilliant and pointed, gaffe-free letters and op-eds from writers even older than I, like Rocco Pugliese on the left and Lewis Clark on the right. Then there’s octogenarian George Will, whose syndicated column published in these pages in May of last year eloquently celebrated being 80. And let’s not forget nonagenarians like Henry Kissinger who are active, alert, productive, and witty in their tenth decade. (Yes, children, people in their nineties are actually in their tenth decade; people in their eighties, in their ninth.)

Everybody but everybody commits gaffes at one time or another. And who among us is flawless?

That said, Biden certainly is President Flaw. He was Vice President Flaw and had been Senator Flaw before that. And Attorney Flaw and Student Flaw even earlier. Incompetent plagiarist, lifelong seat-filling hack whom the party could always count on. Most people would be embarrassed by Biden’s flaws and misdeeds. But evidently not life-long politicians. It may even be the recipe for success.

Because, like it or not, Everyman Joe Biden, after decades of trying, finally got to be President of the United States. Doubtless he was helped by the perception of his party that he was the least objectionable candidate in the primaries; and then, by the great unwashed, the less obnoxious candidate in the general election. No doubt his hack reliability had earned him brownie points with his party’s leadership throughout his career.

Even as a presidential candidate in 2020, Biden’s age was perceived as a more serious problem than his proclivity toward gaffes and his family’s questionable financial affairs. Lucky for him, then, that incumbent President Donald Trump, even though he was almost four years younger, had a reputation for committing gaffes that weren’t gaffes at all.

(It’s worth noting that should Donald Trump be elected in 2024 — heaven forfend! — he’d be a half year older upon inauguration in 2025 than Joe Biden was when he was inaugurated in 2021.)

The editorial, evidently assuming Mr. Biden’s staff had in fact reminded him before a recent press

conference that a congresswoman had died a couple of months ago, takes the president to task for not possessing “the cognitive ability to retain that information.” It really is a pity that some people simply aren’t, perhaps never have been, blessed with memories like elephants — in or out of the room — that never forget.

But, the editorial goes on, “[t]hat disturbing gaffe wasn’t Mr. Biden’s worst.” Back in March, it seems, he “ad-libbed a dangerous comment about Russian President Vladimir Putin, exclaiming, ‘For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power!’ The White House was forced to immediately walk back his remark …” Well, in the first place, the White House wasn’t forced (italics mine) to do anything. Second, Mr. Biden was absolutely right. Third, lots and lots of Americans agreed with him and still do. I suspect that the Republican- American editorial board is among them. It’s really sad that a president, who in theory reflects the feelings of the people who put him in office, should not be allowed to express those feelings — just for the sake of diplomacy or however the advisers, spinners and pundits want to rationalize it.

Biden’s repeated “gaffes” about China also are enthusiastically rehashed in the editorial: “Mr. Biden in May said, for the third time (italics the Republican-American’s), the United States would intervene militarily to defend Taiwan from China.” The White House spinners, however, in order to maintain the administration’s inept albeit diplomatically and commercially advantageous policy of strategic ambiguity, couldn’t wait to “clarify” — i.e., walk back — Mr. Biden’s remarks and reassure the reds that we were still adhering to a One China policy, thus allowing — even encouraging — them to carry on with their abominable conduct in everything you can imagine.

Again, I find myself agreeing with Biden’s words and thinking he knew precisely what he was saying, damn the strategic weasels who would have a zipper on his lips.

President Joe Biden certainly has many flaws. But his ultra-maturity is not among them. After all, isn’t 80 the new 78?

In 1984, when he was 73 and campaigning for a second term in the White House against 56-year-old former Vice President Walter Mondale, Ronald Reagan was asked if he was too old to be President. His pithy answer: “I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent’s youth and inexperience.”

Maturity will prevail!

Paul Mordecai Rosenberg, a commentator living in Litchfield, will have completed his eighth decade on Nov. 28 and looks forward to his ninth. And then some.

And don’t forget: Today is the 956^th anniversary of the Battle of Hastings . . .