PETER VAN ONSELEN: The US election is shaping up to be Weekend at Bernie’s II vs The Empire Strikes Back – and it’s the showdown nobody wants
- The winner will be the oldest American president ever
- Worrying that Biden is losing his cognitive skills
- Can Donald Trump be president behind bars?
This week, former Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley reluctantly said she would vote for Donald Trump… but only because Joe Biden is the alternative.
It was the former United Nations ambassador’s first public appearance since withdrawing from the presidential race. She couldn’t even bring herself to ask her supporters to support Trump.
In the pantheon of the worst sequels ever, this year’s American presidential confrontation ranks right at the top.
An aging and cognitively impaired President Joe Biden is taking on Donald Trump.
The very fact that the former president, who encouraged Americans to storm the Capitol, is again the Republican presidential candidate should arouse fear and disgust.
It says a lot about how few Americans are impressed with Biden that Trump is a serious contender. At age 81, Biden is seeking a second term and another four years in the White House.
Joe Biden, 81, (above) is already the oldest president in American history, but he is looking for four more years
It’s Weekend at Bernie’s II (yes, there was a sequel) verses The Empire Strikes Back
Not that Trump is much better when it comes to aging. He is almost 78 years old, which means that if he wins and serves a full term in office, he will be even older than Biden is now at the end of his presidency.
Biden is already the oldest president in American history.
It’s Weekend at Bernie’s II (yes, there was a sequel) verses The Empire Strikes Back. A box office flop involves a sequel where the bad guys won.
This script stars Biden as Bernie and Trump as Darth Vader: two bad options for the next leader of the free world, as American presidents were once reverently described.
Four years ago I balked at attacks on Biden’s cognitive abilities, but it is becoming increasingly clear that there is something to the allegations.
What will he look like in four years if he gets a second term? Assuming Biden lasts that long in office and doesn’t have to be replaced by his Vice President Kamala Harris, who has been disappointing during her first term.
If Biden wins again, he will have to outlive the average life expectancy in the United States, or in a few years the White House will be forced to announce the president’s silent death after he slips away peacefully in his sleep.
If Trump wins, on the other hand, the bad guys will be back, just like in the Star Wars sequel. Biden’s key role in ousting Trump four years ago will have been completely undone.
A return to President Trump could make his first four-year term look positively normal by comparison. It is not out of the question that Trump could serve as America’s leader from behind bars, which is incredibly not impossible in the American system.
But fortunately that is unlikely.
No spring chicken. If 77-year-old Trump (above) serves another full term, he will be the oldest president
Trump is playing the role of Darth Vader in this year’s presidential showdown
The original Weekend at Bernie’s was a hit from 1989. When it came out all those years ago, Biden was the same age I am now, which isn’t young, by the way.
I remember the movie well because as a calm 13 year old it seemed funny to watch two boys wheel a dead body around for two hours to save their jobs (and lives).
I rewatched it recently and still laughed, but that probably says more about me. Still, there’s nothing funny about watching Biden do a real-life weekend impersonation of Bernie, as his verbal stumbles increasingly reflect his declining physical condition.
Biden’s appearances are becoming lifeless.
Joe Biden’s decline becomes all too clear as voters consider a Donald Trump comeback (Joe Biden photo)
In the latest effort to protect President Biden, his advisers now crowd around him every time he gets on and off a plane, trying to distract from his old man.
Whether or not Biden is still fit for office has become THE issue of the campaign, even though Trump is clearly unfit for office for so many other, more substantive reasons.
Surely a once great democracy can do better than this? A country with 333 million inhabitants must be able to produce better presidential candidates.
The fact that this is not the case in this election speaks to the problems within America’s major party system, the polarized state of American political culture, and the continued decline of the US, both at home and abroad.