Alan Zendell, July 13, 2023

I was playing duplicate bridge the other day, a game with stringent rules of decorum. No one talks out loud when people are playing. Even the bidding is silent, using flashcards. Yet, such are the times we live in, that people at the next table couldn’t resist arguing about President Biden, his accomplishments during thirty months in office and the perception that he’s an ineffectual “doddering old man.”

Aside from being distracted from making a tough contract, I felt my ire rise. I’ve heard this argument before. I looked up doddering in my dictionary app. and found: “shaky, feeble or infirm…,” an interesting definition, because those words describe three very different conditions. I know from experience, because I’m the same age as Biden. Let’s take them one at a time.

Shaky – a fair comment. Biden walks stiffly, sometimes appearing to be in pain, and at times his voice shakes. But anyone who has followed his career knows that his speech impediment is a holdover from stuttering in his youth. As to his walking, I wish I walked as well as he does. Watching him climb the stairs to Air Force One with relative ease makes me envious. If you saw me walk you might think I was in pain, but that would be a misperception. The way our gait changes with age often has nothing to do with pain. Wait until you’re eighty before you judge.

Feeble – definitely not a fair description. My gait may be unsteady, but no one who knows me would call me feeble, and as someone who’s the same age, I can assure you that neither is President Biden.

Infirm – the White House Physician, Kevin O’Connor who is prohibited by law from misrepresenting the president’s state of health, reports that Biden is in excellent health. I almost added “for his age,” but that would be misleading. During my own recent physical, my internist continually used superlatives about my health. It made me laugh, and I finally asked him how he could say I was in perfect health when I carry a walking stick to feel more secure. He said the two things have nothing to do with each other. At my age, doctors worry about heart and lung disease, blood pressure, cholesterol, kidney and liver health, and early signs of dementia. My doctor said that based on those measures I am perfectly healthy, and so is our president, who has been completely transparent about his health.

Compare that with Donald Trump’s apparent health. Despite bizarre comments by his former physician, Ronny Jackson, lauding Trump’s health, he is seriously overweight for someone his age, (that phrase, again,) he has been reported to suffer from heart disease and seriously high cholesterol, and his unhealthy eating habits are well-documented. Three years younger than Biden, he doesn’t rate nearly the clean bill of health Biden gets.

When I hear people call Biden a doddering old man, I want to ask them how a shaky, feeble, infirm man of eighty could have accomplished all he has while in office. His travel schedule alone would exhaust a younger person. And what of his performance?

While in office, Trump was routinely mocked by foreign leaders, not our enemies, but our allies. Our most aggressive adversaries, Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un, did nothing but praise him. But I’ve been paying close attention, and I don’t recall hearing anything but praise for Biden’s performance by our principal allies (the EU, NATO, Canada, Japan, South Korea, and of course, Ukraine.) Even a serious policy disagreement with French President Emmanuel Macron, was smoothed over without any personal recriminations.

I don’t have room to list everything Biden has achieved, but here’s a brief summary: re-uniting NATO after Trump did his best to undermine the alliance; the American Rescue Plan, which provided funding to families and businesses during the COVID pandemic, all of which came straight back into our economy and prevented a recession, as people used it to feed and house their families; cracking the back of the worst inflation the world has seen in decades due to COVID, damaged supply chains, and the war in Ukraine, and doing so faster than every other advanced nation; leading the multinational effort to defend Ukraine against Russian aggression, and as it now appears, seriously weakening Putin’s political power; making major investments in American manufacturing and infrastructure; passing federal gun control legislation; and taking significant strides to mitigate the effects of climate change.

I don’t like the way President Biden walks because it reminds me too much of me. But that’s a damn impressive list of accomplishments with razor-thin majorities in Congress. Biden’s no doddering old man any more than I am, and if you’re reading this, you know I’m not.