Anyone who goes grocery shopping knows to look for the “sell by” date on certain perishables. Some products are fine several days after, but you don’t want to push your luck. Visible decay is a signal that immediate disposal may be the best option.
If Joe Biden were a banana, he’d be showing brown flecks. He was stretching his functional shelf life when he got elected president. At 77, he conducted a low-octane campaign that fit with the COVID-19 pandemic, conserved his energy and minimized the chances of verbal pratfalls. His strategy worked, and so far, he has not proved inadequate to the demands of his job.
But he was born in 1942 — a year closer in time to the Civil War than to the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope. He would be 82 on Inauguration Day and 86 by the end of his second term. Electing even a 77-year-old to the presidency would have been an unacceptably…
