Joe Biden is too old to be president

He just is.

Joe Biden first started running for president when I was in high school.

Also: I’m 51 years old.

Also: He’s still running for president.

That’s kind of astonishing when you think about it — a remarkable feat of endurance and persistence, a form of ambition that kept launching itself against seemingly impervious obstacles until finally those obstacles yielded.

Which is probably why Biden is running for president despite ample evidence that A) American voters don’t want him to, and B) most members of his party think he’s too old for the job.

But some of those obstacles don’t yield. One of them is time. We all get older, until we don’t.

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My wife and I did something rare on Sunday and watched two movies, back-to-back, at our local art house movie theater.

The first was THELMA, which styles itself as a sort of Tom Cruise action movie for the nonagenarian set.

What it’s really about is finding that sweet spot as we age — about how to keep persisting at life until it goes away, but also accepting that age diminishes us a bit, limits our abilities. Glumly accepting fate is no answer. Neither is refusing to accept reality. It’s a complicated dance.

The second is FIREBRAND, about the last days of Henry VIII.

This is a movie about a woman who isn’t actually a radical, who wants merely to be true to her conscience within the power structures of the day. The problem? The power structures — the king — is so restrictive, so terrified of other people’s consciences, so selfish, that he is willing to cast aside the lives of the people closest to him rather than permit modest expressions of difference. Which, by the end of this movie, puts a moderate person in a position where her only choice for survival is to commit a radical act.

Both these movies, I thought, had something to say about the current state of our politics.

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I said last week my fear of Joe Biden continuing in the race was a function of my fear of Donald Trump winning the presidency as a result. That was true. But it’s not the whole truth.

I don’t trust Biden to win. I think the damage done by his debate failure is permanent. I don’t think he can overcome that with voters.

But also: I don’t believe Biden is fit to serve four more years as president.

It’s as simple as that.

There have been too many stories, too many signs that he lacks the stamina and probably even the sharpness to fully occupy his job at this moment. Four more years? No. I don’t believe that. And I don’t believe that most Democrats believe it, either.

And if that’s the case, Biden should step away from the presidential ticket.

Joe Biden started running for president in 1987. That was 37 years ago. When I was in high school. Children born that year are fast approaching middle age. People who were bright young adults then are old now. It’s weird to realize that your life encompasses that much time. But it’s also impossible to imagine FDR running against Ronald Reagan in 1980 — not least because FDR was long dead by then. Mind-bending if you think about it. Biden, meanwhile, is still running for president.

It’s time for him to stop.