Yes. Joe Biden is old. And yes, he should run again for president | Mike Kelly

Let’s begin with the obvious: Joe Biden is old.

But should he run for president — again?

Biden thinks so. Only one-quarter of America agrees.

Welcome to the new American political drama.

On Tuesday, in an early morning video, Biden formally announced that he would seek a second term. What ensued — and will likely continue — is a debate that swings between practicality and prejudice.

Yes, Biden is an old dude. But is he too old to competently serve for four more years in a world that has become increasingly dangerous? And is it a form of bigoted agism to ask such a question?

At 80, Biden is already the oldest president in American history. If he wins a second term, he will be 82 when he places his hand on a Bible and takes the oath of office on the steps of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 20, 2025. When he walks out of the White House at the end of a second term in January 2029, he would be 86.

On some level, such a political journey should be regarded as a stellar accomplishment. Biden first ran for president in 1988. But making such a judgment about Biden's endurance assumes that age will not catch up to him in a second term and cause him to fail in a job where failure is unacceptable.

That’s no small concern.

Ronald Reagan, who previously held the title as America’s oldest president, was decidedly frail when he finished his second term at 77 years old. The same could be said of Dwight Eisenhower, who left office at 70 with a myriad of heart problems. Donald Trump, incidentally, was 74 when Biden replaced him. Andrew Jackson was 69 when he finished his presidency in 1837.

Last summer, in a column, I urged Biden to run again. I still feel that way. Simply put, Biden’s presidency, so far, has been a success. His health, meanwhile, seems steady. Biden, a lifelong teetotaler, watches his diet and exercises regularly. After a recent checkup, Biden's White House doctor described him as “a healthy, vigorous 80-year-old male."

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Those are all good signs — except, of course, for the obvious bromide that Biden is 80.

Yes, Biden trips over his words when speaking in public — a holdover, experts say, from a stuttering condition of his youth. And, yes, Biden occasionally falls off his bicycle. But, as I argued in that column last summer, at least Biden still rides a bicycle. (When was the last time anyone saw Trump on a bicycle?)

Biden entered office dreaming of becoming a new Franklin D. Roosevelt. It was a naïve political pipe-dream — at best. But let’s not overlook Biden’s accomplishments.

He convinced a deeply divided Congress to pass historic legislation to upgrade America’s infrastructure. He also signed the first meaningful, yet all too modest, gun control legislation in decades. And he cobbled together an alliance to help Ukraine hold off an invasion by Russia.

At the same time, Biden has guided the nation through a national health pandemic and a pesky inflationary cycle in the economy that has left many ordinary people wondering how they can manage to pay for such basic items as eggs and milk at the grocery store.

But Biden’s most significant accomplishment is the most difficult to quantify. Simply put, he restored dignity and calm to a White House that had been turned into a chaotic zoo during the Trump administration.

That also is no small accomplishment.

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A welcome absence of chaos and lies

Biden’s advisers do not include a guy who sells pillows or a gaggle of attorneys who promote conspiracies and legal quackery. Nor is Biden lying to America voters that a great fraud has been committed in an election.  And, finally, Biden is not giving voice to the collection of neo-Nazi goons and other bigoted jerks that Trump allowed into his orbit.

As Biden continually points out, he ran for office in 2020 to preserve the “soul” of America. It was a simple but brilliant assessment of the state of the nation.

It needs to be said here that many Trump voters voiced a litany of legitimate concerns. Let's not discount that. But Trump lost sight of the millions who saw him as a savior. Maybe he never really understood them. Who really knows?

When Trump entered U.S. politics, the nation’s economic and educational systems that framed the foundation of the American Dream had failed huge swaths of middle America. Far too many people felt that hard work meant little, that playing by the rules was a road to frustration and that so-called coastal elites had promoted a cultural agenda that turned up its collective nose to patriotism, religion and old-fashioned family values.

Factories and mills disappeared, leaving behind communities that had been gutted and left to die while leaders of both parties behaved as if they were part of a Roman caste system while the rest of the nation burned with anger. College, long-regarded as the road to success, now came with tuition bills that increased faster than the cost of living. Meanwhile, jobs for college graduates did not offer salaries that justified a four-year leap into debt.

Mass shootings rose dramatically. So did crime. And distrust of such institutions as the nation’s long-praised public health system increased — to the point that America could not unite enough to combat the COVID-19 pandemic, in part because right-wing digital "news" platforms trumpeted all manner of falsehoods about such basic health measures as vaccines and wearing surgical masks. So far, more than 1 million Americans have perished from complications from the coronavirus. Such a statistic is a national disgrace for a nation that is home to an all-star list of the world’s best hospitals.

Biden waded into this morass. No wonder he said he wanted to save America’s “soul.” Indeed, our souls were tortured by disinformation, false promises and a new focus on identity politics that reduced people to being classified by skin color and gender.

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Still, Trump looms

Such were just a few of the legitimate concerns raised in the last decade. And in some ways, it was inevitable that desperate corners of America embraced Trump. Much of the nation was already familiar with Trump’s phony life. But as one Trump advocate told me after he moved into the White House in 2017: “We all knew what we were getting with Donald Trump.” By the way, this was a positive comment.

Understandably, many voters saw Trump as a savior, unafraid to examine such delicate issues as immigration and crime. In 2016, Trump’s election should have sent a resounding message that the nation was fed up. And if Trump was smart, he could have cast himself as a bipartisan healer and can-do leader.

But Trump could not get out of the way of his own ego, greed and senseless incompetence. Trump never understood the importance of paying his bills to small contractors who built his casinos in Atlantic City. Likewise, he never understood the importance of loyalty to his voters when he reached the presidency.

And so, Trump opened a Pandora’s box of banshee-like crazy behavior. Remember Trump’s games with Russian President Vladimir Putin?  Or how about Trump’s self-described “love” for North Korean leader Kim Jong Un?  Or how about Trump’s attempted extortion of Ukraine’s Vladimir Zalensky? Or Trump's promise of "Infrastructure Week" and a health care plan that was supposed to make Obamacare seem third-rate? Or, finally, how about Trump’s sleazy attack on democracy that led to the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol?

Biden ended four years of Trump embarrassing this nation. That’s no small accomplishment.

But is that enough to get reelected — even with the likelihood that Trump, at 78 during the 2024 campaign, will be dragging his delusional cross of false grievances once again to the altar of American politics?

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An NBC News poll released this week offers a cautionary template of what is coming. The poll found that a whopping 70% of Americans say Biden should not run for a second term. Only 26% support such a campaign.

Worse, half of the Democrats surveyed by NBC — 51% — do not support a second term by Biden. Trump fares no better, by the way. Most voters don’t want him to run either. Other polls, namely by the Associated Press and CNN, offer similar portraits of an American electorate that is fed up with the Biden-Trump prize fight.

But who is left to step in?

So far, the Republican lineup consists of Ron DeSantis, Mike Pence, Nikki Haley, Asa Hutchinson and possibly Chris Christie. Not exactly a Murderers' Row of candidates.

Democrats are in even worse shape, with such warmed-over candidates as Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar as possibilities and a less-than-inspiring, not-ready-for-prime-time lineup that includes New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy.

The point here is that Biden, despite his age, may be the best the Democrats have.

Biden’s challenge — if his handlers allow it — is to escape the White House and let voters see more of him. The man who fancies himself as “Scranton Joe” or “Amtrak Joe” needs to ride the trains and visit America’s forgotten cities like Scranton, Pennsylvania, more often. He needs to order eggs in a diner and drop by the local supermarket to pick up a quart of milk and perhaps take more rides on his bicycle.

Sure, he’s old. But age can quickly seem secondary when people leave the confines of their home and rub elbows with the world. So far, Biden has remained elusive, speaking only in carefully controlled settings, to easy audiences.

Let’s hope Joe Biden is not too old to learn how to campaign again.

Mike Kelly is an award-winning columnist for the USA TODAY Network as well as the author of three critically acclaimed non-fiction books and a podcast and documentary film producer. To get unlimited access to his insightful thoughts on how we live life in the northeast, please subscribe or activate your digital account today.

Email: kellym@northjersey.com

This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: Joe Biden age irrelevant in 2024 election bid for president