Reset

 I'd like to let you in on a little secret: Sometimes when I walk into the kitchen I stand there. After a few moments, I walk back out again. It is usually at the moment that I enter another room that I remember what I went into the kitchen for in the first place. 

I am sixty-two years old. 

Once upon a time, there was a comedian or two who made lots of jokes about Ronald Reagan being too old to be President of the United States. One of them suggested that his father was seventy years old and they wouldn't let him near the TV remote. 

Ronald Reagan was sixty-nine years old when he took the oath of office for the first time. When he completed his second term, he was seventy-seven years when he left office. 

Joe Biden was seventy-eight years old when he took office. 

Okay. No more secrets. Joe Biden is probably the most hard-working and conscientious president that this country has had since Jimmy Carter. His record of public service is one that will be difficult to recreate in this media-crazed new millennium. There is a reason why photos of Franklin Roosevelt in a wheelchair were not readily available during the four terms he served. With polio. 

Joe Biden does not have polio. FDR was sixty-three years when he died. 

Okay. 

Being old does not mean unfit. But you have to play the media game which seems to value random ramblings about sharks and Hannibal Lecter over thoughtful pauses. Convicted felons over public servants with conviction. Chaos over order. Joe Biden led us all out of four years of bedlam and put us back on a path toward the ideals that he himself holds dear. He was the man who stood up to the hate and fear that had been stirred for years even as he attempted to take the office to which he had been elected. It's hard not to feel like this is a bit of a surrender, but if it's a battle and not the war I'm okay with that. 

Time to look forward, but remember how we all got here.