Today I came across this Jack Shafer column at Politico which argues, pretty convincingly, that there is really only one issue that matters to most people during the State of the Union speech. It isn’t Gaza or Ukraine or immigration or whatever laundry list of promises the White House has come up with for a 2nd Biden term. The only issue that matters tonight is Joe Biden’s age. That’s what everyone who watches will be scrutinizing.
Except for this year’s. Thanks to the stream of memory lapses that burble from the president’s lips like a Rocky Mountain stream, his stiff gait, his falls, his use of the shorter and sturdier set of stairs on Air Force One and even his own self-effacing jokes about his age, Biden has effortlessly attracted the volume of attention that makes him the envy of previous presidents. Unfortunately for Joe, it’s the wrong sort of attention because it…
