This weekend Joe Biden officially turned 19 years older than the president again.

Having a near-senior citizen as vice presidential partner was helpful back in 2008 because some negative know-nothings suggested that this Barack Obama kid hadn’t really done anything to indicate he’d be effective or remotely qualified to effectively handle the most powerful position in the world. Other than be a Real Good Talker. 

So, according to the strategic thinking of David Axelrod, having an old guy — he still rode the railroad train, for pete’s sakes, and acted clueless about these newfangled things called microphones  — would lend gravitas to get the young Chicago pol in the White House door where he could get busy spending a lot of that money that hadn’t been printed yet. 

Biden negated that negative effectively. And they got elected. And started spending.

However, Obama’s already turning gray. By Nov. 6, 2012, he’ll be past 50. And this Biden fellow will be about to enter his 71st year, almost the same advanced age that disqualified that old geezer John McCain from being in position to become president. 

Joe, as we call him, says that Barack, as he calls the president of the United States, has already asked him to be on the Democratic ticket next time. And that may be true — today. Today is also about 20 months before the party’s convention in Scranton or somewhere.

So there’s a lot of time for Barack to change Joe’s mind. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton says she’s not going to run for anything again. And that may be true today too. She’s five years younger than Joe. Indiana’s Evan Bayh is 54. And Tim Kaine is only 52, bilingual and, most importantly, like Obama another Harvard grad, albeit one without a Nobel Prize yet. 

Tomorrow Joe is taking Barack with him to Kokomo, Indiana to talk more economy at an automotive transmission plant belonging to Chrysler, which hopes next year to pull the same kind of IPO on investors as GM just did.

You may have heard that neither Biden nor Obama is happy with the economic recovery that both promised would be so much farther along by now. All by his lonesome this fall, Joe talked about the economy at more than 100 campaign events, mainly for House seats. All that Democrat campaign talk about the economy worked so well that Republicans picked up more House seats on Nov. 2 than anyone has since four years before Joe was born in Scranton.

So, since all that economy talk didn’t really work, maybe some more of it will in north central Indiana, an important battleground state that the Obama-Biden ticket won by just 28,300 votes two years ago out of about 2.7 million cast.

Indiana is run by 61-year-old, Harley-riding Mitch Daniels, another one of those non-charismatic Republican governors who promise to cut public payrolls, create jobs and balance budgets without new taxes — and then just goes and does it.

But c’mon now. Come 2012, what chance could a boring, just-do-it Republican chief executive type have against a real good talking si se puede kind of guy who’s beloved by Oprah?

( Malcolm is the Top of the Ticket blogger at latimes.com/ticket where a similar version of this also appears.)