Age Is More Than a Number. It's an Advantage

 

Joe Biden and I are the same age. Pretty much. Joe was born on November 20, 1942. I was born 16 months later in March 1944. War babies. Joe's age is being held against him. People who don't know anything outside the Fox News bubble -- which means they're ignorant, honey -- like to throw around the word senile, as though that's a game-stopper. I don't know if anyone is accusing me of that, but they probably should. I'm in worse shape than Joe.

Yes, I see the slippage. We all live in our bodies like houses that are constantly falling down around us. I watch the foundation crumbling, the plaster cracking, the paint peeling, the wiring go fritz. I still have my words. I just can't always find them when I want them. And the names of people I've known for decades are suddenly just disappeared. It's frustrating. It's maddening. But I still know a hawk from a handsaw and have a pretty good grip on reality, which is more than we can say for those intellects who call Joe senile because he has the same problem I have, losing his words sometimes. Doesn't matter. He's good at playing poker. Also chess, where he's often three steps ahead of Kevin McCarthy, who seems to be playing checkers.

By any metric -- say, the accomplishments of the Obama admin at this same point in his first term -- Biden's first two years have been stunningly consequential. I'm not going to do the tedious work here of listing all the stuff he's initiated and signed into law (because I need to get out in my garden), but it's extensive, starting with the Inflation Reduction Act and the Infrastructure and Jobs Act and includes the appointment of Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court. And the way he laughed at the Republican peanut gallery at the last State of the Union, and out-maneuvered them into a cul-de-sac, denying angrily that they want to cut Medicare and Social Security. If that's senile, I'm a new admirer of senility.