The real issue is not Biden's age -- it's VP Kamala Harris. [View all]
"...Eight vice presidents have taken over for leaders who have died in office, and reading between the lines of the actuarial tables, Vice-President Kamala Harris has even odds to become the ninth...
This demographic divergence is the beginning and end of the consternation around Harris’s possible succession to the presidency, because she meets or exceeds every other qualification on their collective resumes. Among the most famous successes, she has more government and elected experience than Teddy Roosevelt, more education and accomplishment than Harry Truman, and broader popular support than Lyndon Johnson. And she had to do it all as a Black and South Asian-American woman... She’s just the least likely to be recognized for it...
... we ... had this discussion with the nomination of Sen. John McCain. As an elder statesman with a unique and non-transferrable political cache, a history of cancer survival, and a then-unprecedented advanced age, McCain’s choice for his successor in the event of a health emergency was heavily scrutinized, even before he made a decision. His pick would be a window into his judgment: How he would approach the problems of the country ... who he—and by extension, we—would trust to carry them out with all the care and faith due to the American people.
And he picked Sarah Palin.
To even begin to go into how wildly unprepared and unqualified she was for the role would be an insult to both Biden and Harris, so I won’t make a comparison. Instead, I will point out that many of the same worries and constraints that weighed down McCain’s candidacy were as true of Biden in 2020—made even more urgent by the COVID-19 pandemic and placed under a harsher spotlight by an unhinged opposition. Biden made his decision as a responsibility to the country and the party, recognizing that the best result for the latter would be to pick someone who could capably and faithfully serve the former. He was a vice president himself, after all...
That is the worry that is consuming our political discourse under the guise of (im)polite concern over how old President Joe Biden is. There is no telling what it would mean for the country to experience that kind of shift, to lose a president and accept a new one under the most tragic and terrible conditions. People want to know that there will be continuity, that there will be success, that we can place our trust in the successor as much as the person who preceded them. Because of how unprecedented she is, Kamala Harris doesn’t immediately provide that comfort for the people who are watching. But seeing her as vice president, I’ve realized that she doesn’t have to.
The quality of a vice president isn’t just about their résumé or their achievements; it’s about the person that picked them, and their understanding of the costs. I don’t need to believe that Vice-President Kamala Harris will be the right successor to President Joe Biden; he does—and that’s enough."
Full essay at
https://www.damemagazine.com/2023/10/12/the-media-has-a-real-thing-against-vp-kamala-harris/
I'd forgotten I'd read this a while ago when it showed up on FB today. Put this way, it now seems so much more plausible and obvious. I wonder if others have thought this.
= new reply since forum marked as read
