Time to Bow Out, Joe. You too, Don.

So, the two oldest men ever to run for President of the United States, Joe Biden and Donald Trump, are the choices we currently have to lead the country.

In our entire history as a nation, no one who had reached the age of 70 has ever earnestly sought the Presidency, with the sole exceptions of Donald Trump and Joe Biden. Ronald Reagan came closest, but most historians would say he retired just in time. Whether the reader of this column is a Democrat or a Republican, most would agree that the eighth decade of life is not the time to aspire to the Presidency of the United States. We can do better. Donald Trump was a one-term President. Joe Biden should also be a one-term President. Neither should be returned to the Oval Office for political or actuarial reasons.

With 50 governors, 100 hundred senators, and hundreds of representatives in Washington, and thousands more at the state level throughout the United States, not to mention the finest military in the world, it staggers the imagination to contemplate that Joe Biden and Donald Trump are being served up as the two most realistic choices we have to lead the country. 

Donald Trump became President nearly eight years ago after losing the popular vote to Hillary Clinton, with 62.9 million for Trump compared to 65.8 for Clinton. However, he prevailed in our arcane Electoral College, where he wound up with 304 electoral votes to Clinton's 227. When the nation was founded, the Electoral College made sense. It doesn't anymore, and on five different occasions, candidates for President who have lost the popular vote still won the Presidency. Trump, in 2020, was, of course, the most recent loser of a national presidential election, but in 2016, he still secured enough electoral votes to win the national election.

In 1824, Andrew Jackson won pluralities of the popular vote and the Electoral College, but not a majority, sending the election to the House of Representatives. It wasn't the last time the electoral college allowed for mischieve. Jackson quit the Senate and ran again for President in 1828, winning easily. Rutherford Hayes became President in much the same way, in a compromise the Democrats agreed to in exchange for a promise to pull federal troops from the South, thereby ending Reconstruction. In 1888, Democratic President Grover Cleveland won the popular vote with more than 90,000 votes over Republican Benjamin Harrison, but he lost the electoral vote 233 to 168. Cleveland would take back the office in the next presidential election.

Republican George W. Bush lost the popular vote to Democrat Al Gore by more than 500,000 votes. The Supreme Court intervened and stopped the recount with Bush ahead in Florida, giving the election to the former Texas governor. Bush won 271 electoral votes to Gore's 266. And, of course, in 2016, Trump won the Electoral College with 304 electoral votes compared to Hillary Clinton's 277, but he still lost the popular vote by nearly 2.8 million votes. While these oddities occur, the American electoral system has served the country well.

For the most part, candidates accept our election outcome and do so gracefully. Donald Trump is, of course, the exception. Because he insists, without a shred of evidence, that the last presidential election was rigged, I question whether Trump is capable of acknowledging defeat should he lose the forthcoming election. While I do not believe he can manipulate the election results, he has great latitude to cause serious misgivings about the outcome. In so doing, he tarnishes the seriousness of our electoral process, and the cost of that mischieve is potentially enormous.

He has demonstrated that he doesn't care about the sanctity of our elections nor the damage he can do. He also demonstrates utter contempt for anyone who confronts him, and confrontation comes with the territory in political elections. In politics, someone always loses, and someone always wins. Donald Trump seems incapable of acknowledging defeat, so a contest in which he can lose, as he did in 2020, has all the makings of a high-speed train wreck.

I would prefer that candidates other than Joe Biden and Donald Trump faced off against one another in the election next November. This contest will be between the two oldest men who have served in the Oval Office. Joe Biden is showing his age. Donald Trump isn't. Trump comes across, to this observer, as the same ill-tempered and haughty public personality he has always been. Mar-a-Lago fits him perfectly—1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, not so much.

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Recent podcasts have featured my commentary on Liz Cheney’s book, “Oath and Honor,” as well as my commentaries regarding:

U.S. Representative Jim Jordan,

Brian Kemp and Those Republicans of Georgia,

The Trump Indictments,

The Fox Corp Settlement,

The CNN Trump Town Hall,

The Hunter Biden plea deal,

The New American Cult of Personality,

and my interviews with William Bratton, Retired Chief of Police in New York City, Los Angeles, and Boston.

Rikki Klieman, Attorney, Network News Analyst, and best-selling author;

John Thoresen, Executive Director, Barbara Sinatra Children’s Center;

Katherine Gehl, co-author of The Politics Industry and founder of the Institute for Political Innovation,

Jazz artist Ann Hampton Callaway,

Outlander author Diana Gabaldon,

AI Data Scientist Lawrence Kite,

Ryan Clancy, Chief Strategist of No Labels,

Senator Barbara Boxer,

Senator Joe Lieberman,

and Maryland Governor Larry Hogan.

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Novels by Hal Gershowitz