When Old Guys Won’t Die (or Quit)

Now as the post-debate chatter about President Biden’s fitness for office rages on, all kinds of gossip from “unnamed sources” are also emerging.

OMG! He’s sleeping late! And he’s taking naps! And he looks old!

Now a lot of people are suddenly noticing his “decline” and suddenly voicing concerns.

Meanwhile, hardly anyone objected to the racist tropes Trump made during the debate. No one later challenged his bogus warning about immigrants destroying this nation of immigrants. No one questioned his accusation that these immigrants were “stealing jobs” from Black people and other hard-working Americans. No one voiced serious concerns about all the other dumb stuff he said, either. No one seemed to really care about any of the wall-to-wall lies Trump spouted that night. Why?

Even when Senior Citizen Trump was POTUS 45 and doing nothing more than getting up late and trying to watch all his big screen TV’s at the same time, very few citizens or news hounds objected. Nobody questioned his fitness for office so much that they wanted him to resign. Why?

Because there are 2 recurring political themes in this country that won’t go away. The first one is the unshakeable omnipresence of fascist demagogue Donald Trump. POTUS 45 simply will not leave us — in the literal or figurative sense. Even if he dies, historians and psychologists will continue to examine him for years to come.

The second one is the ubiquitous double standard between Democrats and Republicans that keeps infiltrating American politics and journalism. That is, the Blue Team never seems to catch a break at all, while the Red Team ALWAYS garners nothing but support, approval, and relentless understanding.

Latest case in point? The debate last Thursday night between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump.

The reactive reporting of the media at the time, as well as the current political zeitgeist, epitomizes what happens when ageism, bias, and faulty research converge to form misinformation.

So let’s break it down and examine what happened, dear readers, so you can gain a better understanding of my viewpoint.

Let’s look at the polling itself — the surveys done after the debate used to gauge audience response and aid in opinion research.

Among participants who either view or listen to any Presidential debate, there are usually only 5 responses to the question “Who do you think won this debate?”

#1. The Democratic Candidate
#2. The Republican Candidate
#3. The Independent Candidate
#4. “I don’t know, I’m not sure,” A.K.A. UNDECIDED
#5. “ No one really won or lost this debate,” A.K.A. TIE
Did you notice that, in this polling, the UNDECIDED and TIE responses were not even included in the results of most of these surveys?

That’s because the question posed was an either/or one: Who do you think won the debate — Biden or Trump?

That meant survey participants could only choose one of the two candidates — not just give their honest opinions about the debate they’d just witnessed…probably on TV. Or was it on a podcast, or a radio?

Remember, during the Nixon-Kennedy debate of 1960, people watching the televised debate thought Kennedy had won it, while people listening to the debate on the radio thought Nixon had won it.

Apparently in 2024, no such distinction was even considered. A minor point, yes, but it should have been included in the results. Opinion research requires that questions must be easily understood but not vague or misleading or confusing. Also important are random samplings, not computer lists, not polling that’s directly aimed at a particular demographic group — unless you specifically want to target that particular group. So if your opinion research involves only college students who believe retirement age should begin at 50-55 years, your opinion research about politicians in their late 70’s and early 80’s will probably be unfavorable. Those results might not accurately reflect election results for the 2024 Presidential Election in which voters aged 21-80 or 90+ years would vote, either.

More importantly, though, is the realization that opinion research should be designed to gather information about public opinion, not influence public opinion. But the same media that refused to do any fact-checking about Trump’s questionable remarks in real time during the debate, quickly and continuously opined Joe Biden was an unmitigated, unforgivable disaster right after the debate ended. This immediate emotional commentary, combined with questionable opinion research later on, resulted in a pile-on against Biden and tsunami-like panic in the Democratic Party.

The media at large pounced on Biden’s poor showing so intensely that their commentary fostered — no, CREATED — the notion that he couldn’t/wouldn’t/shouldn’t be the Democratic candidate in the 2024 Presidential Election.

Well, duh. It was pretty obvious to all that it wasn’t Biden’s greatest night on the debate stage. No one’s arguing that his remarks and rebuttals were absolutely fabulous, either. The President didn’t look good or sound good as he delivered his opening statement. His voice was weak, almost inaudible. He also fumbled some words in a way that canceled out the corrections he made right after his gaffes.

No doubt that in Biden’s case, having a history of stuttering and having to recover from a cold that night did affect his performance. Other reasons for his visible fatigue have also been cited. Obviously, things like jet lag and sleep apnea also could have affected his appearance, as well as his presentation. And, of course, he is an old guy — something we don’t usually see on TV.

Maybe we should start seeing old people — I mean, REALLY SEEING old people — the way motorists should start seeing motorcycles.

Is it not possible that facial expressions and body movements that old people display are just un-photogenic visuals that we don’t want to see? And our disdain for aging itself is mischaracterizing this body language as “confusion” or “dementia” or “madness”?

Biden’s appearance has obscured the reality that the debate lasted 90 minutes and his answer to the first question was timed to be 2 minutes or less.

Now contrast the current media/political fallout about Biden with Ronald Reagan in the 1980 debate he had with Fritz Mondale.

Remember all the concerns about Reagan’s age back then — and his fitness for office? That all evaporated when Ronnie turned to his opponent during the debate and quipped about Mondale’s “youthfulness” and “lack of experience.” And we all laughed. (Even “Crazy Legs” Mondale had a hearty chuckle.)

Oh, that Ronnie! What a great sense of humor! What a guy! He’s soooo presidential!

What we didn’t know at the time, however, was that Reagan had gotten the questions the moderator was going to ask him and Mondale in advance. That’s right. Team Red lied, cheated, and stole for their candidate. Of course, no one ever talks about that now. The good little loyal Republicans have ignored the truth and reframed Reagan’s witty responses — ones that were scripted and memorized by him — as just more examples of “When Character Was King” to honor their beloved POTUS 40.

In the Red Zone, only good memories remain for St. Ronnie.

That’s why most voters can’t “remember” any of the embarrassing screw-ups Ronnie made. Few people nowadays even know that he announced he was going to bomb Russia during a radio broadcast — and scared Europe to death. After the unsuccessful assassination attempt on his life, he also experienced cognitive problems. During his second Presidential term, signs of dementia were also evident. But no one in the press or the Republican Party or the White House said anything at all about it. Reagan had the protection and adoration of his White House handlers and Secret Service agents to step in whenever any reporter or visitor tried to talk to him, or press him for information.

Then too, he had wife Nancy Reagan: that scary little thing who’d fire any staffer near him who dared to schedule any personal appearances or interviews for him when the moon was in Leo, the sign opposing his Sun sign of Aquarius.

Even Reagan’s daughter Patti later admitted in an interview, “He was all right until he fell off that horse.” Horse? What horse? Which fall?

It’s pretty obvious there were a lot of people who knew he was physiologically unfit for office but chose to keep their mouths shut. Republicans only want us to remember what a great guy he was, despite Iran-Contra, despite the fact that his “trickle-down economics” was just another B.S. ploy to make the rich richer…

So much for the 80’s.

Now it’s 2024 and Republicans far and wide can’t stop reminding the world that Biden is too old to be President. Now members of Biden’s own party are ready to plop him on an ice floe, never to be re-elected or seen again.

With such demanding high standards and idealism, the Democratic Party has gotten too eager to throw any and every imperfect Democrat under the bus. Maybe if they started seeing Biden as weathered sage and not as stubborn old guy, they’d gain some much-needed new perspectives. They’d realize that when Trump was “debating” how Biden wanted to rip healthy, living babies from the womb at 9 months, Biden’s look wasn’t confusion or disorientation. It was his WTF mien. As in, This guy is supposed to be debating me, but all he’s doing is lying and misinforming and calling ME a criminal?

A little more support and understanding, please.