Biden is an old man overwhelmed by events

This isn’t to mock Biden, or to diagnosis him with any condition from afar. Age comes for us all. It just happens to have come for Joe Biden when he is holding the most taxing responsibility on the planet — one that has visibly and rapidly aged men 30 years younger than he is — at a time of international peril and profound discontent in the country.

The job of president has overwhelmed much younger men. Jimmy Carter was 55 in 1979 when the Iran hostage crisis overtook his presidency. George W. Bush was 60 when the Iraq War and Hurricane Katrina brought him low. Biden now would have trouble commanding the stage in the manner demanded by the modern presidency even in much more advantageous circumstances.

The Kimmel appearance underlines how forlorn the belief is that all the Biden presidency needs is more Joe Biden. Biden and people close to him reportedly think that he should get out more, with one Biden confidante telling Politico that the White House needs to, in the inevitable cliché used by frustrated loyalists, “let Biden be Biden.”