Opinion: Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders are too old to be president
By Richard Cohen Richard Cohen Columnist focusing on politics Email Bio Columnist March 18 at 5:02 PM The joke among people my age is that every dinner party starts with an organ recital: Who’s lost a gall bladder, got a new kidney or maybe just replaced a knee? What’s the pain of the day, and who sleeps through the night? Charles de Gaulle said old age is a shipwreck, so the question for the United States is whether it should consider the age of likely presidential candidates who, statistics...
Both men are now at about the age when the indomitable Winston Churchill started to hit the wall. He was a mere 77 when King George VI thought of approaching him to suggest he step down. Churchill did not — until a stroke forced him to. The argument here, of course, is that neither Biden nor Sanders lives a Churchillian life — no cigars, no whiskey for breakfast. On the other hand, they are not nearly as articulate.
But while looking good may be the best revenge, it isn’t the whole story. The brain ages. It slows down. It forgets. I know men in their 90s — Henry Kissinger comes to mind — who seem as sharp as they’ve ever been, but they are not the rule. It is not necessary to have great mental energy to get elected — President Trump is an intellectual sloth — but it helps. Old age can turn the delight in doing certain tasks into a plodding burden.
Of course, a president need not be intimately familiar with youth culture. But he ought to feel at home in the world and feel that the culture is his, that he need not have to pause to translate a thought into politically acceptable language. I don’t know if either Biden or Sanders feels that way, but if they don’t occasionally hanker for a Beatles tune, they already lack all memory.
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