BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON  |  JULY 9, 2024

“Good judgment comes from experience; experience comes from bad judgment.”  — Dr. Kerr L. White, famous physician and author, native of Winnipeg, citizen of the world.

The early years of my life’s journey were replete with questionable—okay, bad—judgment. But along the road, through seven decades, most of my experiences afforded me better judgment.
The most valuable experience has been just growing old; maturing and appreciating that on any given day I am not the person I was the previous day. Change is constant and inevitable. If you are open to it, with it comes enlightenment and ultimately the wisdom and humility to know how much you don’t know.

President Joe Biden, just a few years my senior, seems to be still in denial about aging. His spirit is robust but his mind and body are not. His reasoning is stunted.

I am among those on the aging side of aging who believe the President has not reached a reality: he cannot do justice to the immense job and grave responsibilities he holds, certainly not for another four years. He has lost the battle between wisdom and wishful thinking. You have a choice at our age: you embrace aging gracefully or grudgingly. He seems to be captive of the latter.

The reality may be difficult to accept because it conflicts with a lifetime quest for his rightful place on Mt. Rushmore. It also seems to me that with the sunglasses, the unbuttoned shirts, the hair grown from plugs, and the rugged persona he is determined to perpetuate a self-image that he has nourished for decades. It is no longer credible or desirable (if it ever was).

Biden has declined physically and mentally in a cascade of senior moments in front of all of us, not over weeks or months, but years. There is no need to relive them. He now evokes pity and in politics that can be worse than anger.

Maybe that is why Biden has gone from determined to defiant. ‘Don’t pity me, man, I’ll show you!’ He called into a cable TV show and lambasted those who doubt his mental acuity. He wrote a letter to Democratic colleagues vehemently asserting that he isn’t going anywhere, “And I wouldn’t be running if I didn’t absolutely believe that I am the best candidate to beat Donald Trump in 2024.”

Whether he can beat the former president is questionable. It is also irrelevant. That is not the issue he should be addressing. What he didn’t express defiantly, convincingly, or at all is whether he will be able to lead the nation for the next four years and effectively unite and lead the country through an avalanche of unprecedented domestic crises all while maintaining our integrity, respect, and influence around the globe.

The critical question on the table is what is in the best interests of the nation? Leaders in all walks of life and especially U.S. presidents have found their way to that crossroads in life and politics. It requires some soul searching because the right answer, the right course for the betterment of all may mean painful self-sacrifice.

Biden must also bridge the cavernous gap between his brand of reality and the perceptions of the American people. Many don’t buy it. They don’t believe he can do it and they don’t trust him with their future. Trust of the American people is paramount to good governance in a democratic republic. Americans are already disillusioned in government, politics, and political institutions. He cannot govern unless the people are with him, without much equivocation.

“Before the debate a majority of those polled said they no longer thought he had it in him physically or mentally to do the job of president anymore,” Peggy Noonan wrote in an excellent Wall Street Journal column. “After the debate that number reached 72 percent. You can’t un-ring the bell.” She continued, “You have no governance in how you age and at what speed, or what illnesses or conditions arise. You only have governance in what you do about it.”

Most of us are convinced, I believe, that the country is off the rails and are vitally concerned about how we get it back on track under these bizarre circumstances? Sadly, however, the hour of reckoning is here.

Our political system has failed us. We are at the mercy of the two political parties that have failed us. They have been captured and imprisoned by extremes that do not reflect the country as a whole. The parties have imposed unwarranted power and influence over both our systems of politics and governance. In this vast country of 360 million people they have refused to present voters with the candidates most people want and need. Among those millions, we should not be facing a choice between two men far advanced in age, one utterly lacking in character and the other utterly lacking stamina and a firm grip on reality.

There is so much more to this drama than who remains at the top of the ticket. We must look for answers together. If ever it was time again for the citizenry to fulfill the responsibilities of citizenship, this is it. For the moment though, there is one citizen who can give us hope, by setting aside pride in his long career of accomplishments and making a graceful exit, stage left.