Many young people have the mistaken understanding of olds that as their mental faculties diminish, they slide from wise, cogent beings into incoherent drooling dementos. As an old, and an old who has spent a good deal of time dealing with even older olds over the past few years, that’s not how it works. It creeps in, quietly at first, and then one day, you end up missing from Congress for six months and eating lime jello in a home for people with dementia, delightfully called a senior living center.
It’s one thing for a member of Congress to succumb to senility. After all, the ramifications aren’t necessarily different from those who entered Congress despite their inability to enjoy rational thought. It’s another for those who hold singularly important positions. One of the underdiscussed issues at the moment is who is the president?
After Biden’s debate performance, it’s undeniable that he’s on slope of senility. No doubt he has good time as well as bad, and during those good times, he’s fully capable of exercising the prerogatives of office. But what of the moments when his mental faculties are less than at their best? We need a president capable of performing the duties of the office at all times, 24/7. We know that’s not the case anymore, and what we do not know is whether he is still calling the shots, and if so, whether his decisions are sound or not. Even worse, we know that there are people in the White House aware of the problem, and yet have concealed it, denied it, and by doing so, violated the trust of a nation by leaving it in the hands of a man unable to fulfill his duty to a nation.
Lest anyone think this is some partisan smack, our president-elect is no spring chicken either. Trump has already showed signs of age-related problems, even if he’s appeared vigorous at other times. But over the next four years, as he ages from his spry 78 to the 82 he’ll be by the end of his term, the probability is strong that he, too, will suffer the ravages of age. And like Biden, the probability is high that those around him will conceal it, deny it, and by doing so, violate the trust of a nation by perpetuating a senile presidency rather than just a vulgar, deceitful, narcissistic, ignorant one.
Like it or not, Trump is old, just as Biden is old. We knew this going in, but then, age was hardly the worst of Trump’s extant problems. And yet, he was elected, and elections are how we choose our president, for better or worse.
But did anyone elect senile Trump? Will his devoted fans be willing to recognize and admit it should he start to fail as a consequence of age? Some will argue that age doesn’t necessarily mean a person is going senile, and while that may be true, at least to some extent, the rationalization doesn’t prevent a slide down the slippery slope of old age either. Excuses won’t stem the effects of creeping dementia, and won’t turn that 3 am rant from dementia into basis idiocy.
Have we reached the limits of the gerontocracy? Can we run the risk of another president who, during his term of office, has aged out of the ability to be reliably cogent day and night, every day? If, during the reign of Trump, can we trust one of the Steves, Miller or Bannon, to tell the public that Darth Cheeto is drooling and the time has come to invoke the 25th Amendment?
We’ve already seen that the Biden White House can’t be trusted, from staff to cabinet secretaries to the spare. We know the media didn’t help, although it’s likely to be far more accommodating when it comes to calling Trump senile. But then, will anyone trust the media when it cries, yet again, that the sky is falling?
But the likelihood is pretty darn good that the sky will fall over the next four years, at least when it comes to Trump falling prey to senility. It will likely creep in, first in small bites and later in more obvious chunks, but there will be times, perhaps between 10 in the morning and 4 in the afternoon, when he can still put on a decent enough show to get by. But what he won’t be is a person capable of performing the functions of president, at least to the extent he was ever capable.
Is this good enough? Should there be an age when the risk is just too great to endure? Even if elected at an advanced age, the person a year or two from now will almost certainly not be the same person as the one people voted for. What then? Who will answer the late night call when emergency strikes and we need a president to be ready to do his job? At what point is a person just too damn old to be trusted to be the president for the term of office?
*Tuesday Talk rules apply.