You May Be Done With Joe Biden… But He’s Not Done With You

No sooner were the mid-term election ballots counted (actually some of them are still being counted in incompetent places like Arizona and California), than Joe Biden dropped broad hints that he’s running for reelection as president in 2024.

This is not the first time that Biden has dropped such hints, but these are the most explicit. It also fits with a tradition of starting the next presidential election contest immediately after the mid-term elections.

We can expect a formal announcement from Biden early next year. For the record, Biden will turn 80 years old next week. If he wins in 2024, he’ll be 82 years old if he’s sworn in for a second term in January 2025, and he’ll be 86 years old if he completes his second term in 2029. All three of those benchmarks are records for a U.S. president.

Prior to Biden, the oldest president ever elected was Ronald Reagan, who was 69 when he was sworn in and 77 when he completed his second term. Biden stands in sharp contrast to the following presidents who were sworn in at the ages indicated: Teddy Roosevelt (42), John F. Kennedy (43), Ulysses S. Grant (46), Grover Cleveland (47), and James K. Polk (49). Almost all of the remaining presidents were in their 50s or early 60s when they were sworn in. George Washington was 57.

This is not about ageism. Henry Kissinger is 99 years old today and recently wrote two brilliant books on the world order and artificial intelligence.

Many Fortune 100 companies require mandatory retirement at 60 years of age. The retired CEOs go on to have productive second careers as board members, scholars, writers and advisors to bankers and politicians.

The age barrier is about a specific talent called executive capacity. It’s about the ability to command vast amounts of data, balance competing points of view, and make life-or-death decisions in high-stress conditions.

Those in their 80s have wisdom and experience to offer but are the first to admit that they are not best suited to make command decisions where the fate of the nation is at stake.

Is Biden up to the task? Clearly not.

He exhibits signs of dementia almost daily. Dementia is a progressive condition, highly correlated with age, and irreversible with current medical treatments.

Biden is already unfit for the presidency. His likely condition in 2029 will be unimaginably worse.

Then there’s the simple matter of longevity. The last president to die in office was John F. Kennedy in 1963. It’s not an eventuality the U.S. has faced in almost 60 years and shines a harsh light on Kamala Harris, who is not old but is not especially bright.

Still, we are heading down the path of having a senile octogenarian president who may die in office and be succeeded by an incompetent hack in a dangerous world. As an investor, are you ready for that?

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