President Joe Biden is not too old to know what he has done.
No matter how dimmed he may be by age, he has to know that he should have just stepped down after one good term.
The Democrats then could have then selected somebody the usual way, with primaries.
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Maybe Josh Shapiro, Pennsylvania’s governor, would have been a candidate.
Maybe it would have been Gretchen Whitmer, Michigan’s governor. The result could have actually been the first woman president.
Whoever it was, he or she would have been the party’s choice.
And the duly chosen candidate would have been in a better position than Vice President Kamala Harris was to call Donald Trump a threat to democracy.
The candidate also would have been obliged to defend whatever Biden had and had not done, particularly in terms of the southern border.
One thing Trump was right about was that Harris had become the Democratic candidate without a single vote.
Too much else of what Trump said was dangerously false.
But he is going to the White House nonetheless.
He will again be our commander-in-chief, and he now regains the mantle having spoken of using the military to secure the southern border, quell domestic protests, and fight crime in our cities.
Among the troops he will command are three young soldiers who were manning an information table outside the U.S. Army Force Recruiting Station in Times Square last week.
They had American flags on the right shoulder of their fatigues and name tags on the chest. Ahmed said she is from Ethiopia. Yilmaz is from Turkey. Stupuris is from Lithuania.
“What’s wonderful for me about the United States is, all the nations, all the cultures, like you can find every single culture, every single race in here and people are united here,” Stupuris said. “That I just love about it. That’s what’s beautiful to me about the United States.”
He said he is 20 and enlisted on March 11, 2024. He had graduated high school and had done some college, then decided he went to join the military.
“I’m gonna admit it, I didn’t join to serve the United States first,” he said. “But after I got my uniform, after training, after I met people who say thank you for your service, now it’s turning into I want to actually serve this country because how amazing it is.”
He stood bright eyed at the recruiting station where America famously celebrated its victory in World War II. He said hopes to become a Green Beret and seemed exactly the kind of person we want to defend us.
But thanks to Biden, we will now have a commander-in-chief who talks about sending troops against what he calls the enemy within. And Biden is 81.
That does not absolve him.
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