Sometimes we need to be saved from ourselves

Joe Biden, most recently the toast of Ballina and the great hope of the Democratic Party in the upcoming US presidential election, now finds himself in a no man’s land.

While it suited the Democrats to underline Biden’s credibility as the man to defeat the populist and amoral Trump a second time around (and especially as no effective or credible alternative candidate had appeared on the horizon) the hope was that Biden’s age – 81 and, after a four year term, 85 – would not become an election issue.

The gap between Biden and Trump in terms of credibility and suitability for the highest political office in the free world could not be starker. Biden, the essence of everything that is admirable in terms of public service, moral purpose and civic responsibility – and Trump, a fantasist who is hoping that the presidency may protect him from a series of imminent court cases.

At face value and probably in any democracy in the world – apart from the USA, that is – the alternatives couldn’t be clearer and the decision at the polls more obvious. Biden’s credentials for high office overwhelm those of Trump.

But now after the recent catastrophic television debate, overnight Biden has been transformed from the candidate who could be relied on to defeat Trump into the candidate who may well deliver the White House to Trump on a plate.

The Democratic Party tactic of holding their breath and hoping for the best has imploded. Biden was unmasked as the unforgiving television lens revealed an octogenarian in a panic of confusion and miscalculation with clear evidence of the cognitive deterioration that often attends old age. It is no fault of Joe Biden or the aged that we all eventually succumb to the encroachments of our declining years and that our ‘senior moments’ become more regular and more debilitating.

It isn’t clear at this stage how this dilemma for the Democratic Party, for America and for the free world, is going to be resolved. Will Biden insist on continuing? Or will he be persuaded to enjoy the benefits of a well-deserved retirement? What does his family really think? Are they acting out of loyalty to his need or out of concern for his or their future? Could this even be an example of ageism or even of elder abuse? 

The question that surely haunts his family is: should we allow a husband, a father, a grandfather in his eighties to become either a willing or unwilling victim of the present debacle to save America from Trump?

As we move into our later years, regardless of how we imagine we haven’t really aged all that much, the grim reality is that – apart from the usually cosmetic efforts to pretend that somehow we can halt the ageing process – the years take their toll. As John 21:18 reminds us: When you were younger, you dressed yourself and went where you wanted; but when you are old you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will dress you and lead you to where you do not want to go.

Old age happens to everyone – if we live long enough to experience it. And while personal decision-making is a great blessing that can extend into old age, we can sometimes need reminding that there comes a time when decisions – through no fault of our own – force themselves on us.

In a recent column in The Sunday Times, the doyenne of newspaper columnists, Matthew Parris, evidenced Joe Biden’s sad story, as a reason ‘why we should quit before we embarrass ourselves’ – before Parris himself announced that ‘this will be my last Saturday column’.

It is a perceptive comment as we all tend to give ourselves the benefit of the doubt when people compliment us on ‘looking well’. We are easily convinced of the accuracy of a complimentary comment when, if applied to others, we could just as easily identify as plámás or merely a formulaic conversational comment.

Indeed the problem starts, long before cognitive deterioration, when we are easily convinced that somehow, while age is more than just a number, its unavoidable implications don’t really apply to you or me.

Biden’s catastrophic debate with Trump was an indelible line in the sand that effectively surfaced the great unmentionable question: if according to long-established Pentagon protocols an American President has just six minutes to respond to a nuclear weapon hurtling towards America, how would an 85-year-old Biden – fast asleep in the middle of the night – respond to that call? And, to compound matters, Biden’s subsequent interview to re-establish his credibility was unconvincing.

A difficult truth for all of us is that we reach a point in life when we are no longer as good as we were and when our nearest and dearest need to remind us of a simple truth. It is that regardless of whether we are soldiers or sailors, presidents or priests (or newspaper columnists, as Matthew Parris pointedly reminds himself and those who need reminding!) to encourage us to ignore the reality of the sands of time slipping through our fingers is to render us a false service. Sometimes we have to be saved from ourselves. As one commentator, albeit a mite cruelly suggested, this is ‘about taking the car keys from Granda’.

Joe Biden by common consent has reached that point and pretending he hasn’t is no service to the free world, the US, his family or himself. Who after all would want to expedite the humiliation of a decent man whose only discernible fault is that he has grown old? Who would want to endanger his proud legacy of a lifetime of public service by sacrificing it on the altar of political expediency and family expectation?

Sometimes we have to be saved from ourselves. Sometimes we have to be told to leave the stage. Sooner or later, hand on heart, we are all ‘that soldier’.