As far as I’m concerned, Joe Biden is a national hero: the savior of our democracy and the most honest man to ever occupy the Oval Office. They should erect his statue in courthouse plazas across America.

But Biden is not expected to run for re-election in 2024.

It is time for those of us born under FDR’s administration to step aside. I would favor a constitutional amendment requiring the president to be not only over 35, but under 75.

As fit and lively as he is — every other cyclist over 70 I know who fell was rushed straight to the ER — Biden will turn 80 on his next birthday. He would be almost 82 in the 2024 election and 87 at the end of his second term.

That’s assuming he lives that long, which he’s more likely to do if he’s strolling the beach with his grandkids instead of flying out to stressful meetings in Saudi Arabia or South Korea.

Biden shouldn’t do it to himself, and he shouldn’t do it to the country. As I wrote in 2019, urging him not to run against Donald Trump: “Anyone in the mid-70s who tries to tell you they don’t feel the transmission slipping as the winged chariot of time Your judgment may be stronger, but your memory isn’t what it used to be, solving complex problems is harder, and new ideas are harder to absorb.

But you know what? Biden was right to be the only Democrat who could defeat Donald Trump in 2020, and I was wrong.

Hard to believe, I know. But also a fact.

None of this is to endorse the poisonous Republican slander portraying the President as a weak-minded puppet whose strings are being pulled by George Soros, antifa, “The Squad” or any puppeteer other than the right-wing imagination. mentioned. If my emails are any indication, embittered Trumpists will believe anything – the wilder the better.

Joe Biden whacked? Come back to me when he recommends injecting bleach as a cure for COVID-19, talks about Revolutionary War airports, or brags about imaginary big league tryouts with first basemen from the Hall of fame.

But yes, the president’s approval ratings have dropped to near Trump levels. Former Obama strategist David Axelrod put it this way in a New York Times interview:

“Biden is not getting the credit he deserves for leading the country through the worst of the pandemic, passing landmark legislation, rallying the NATO alliance against Russian aggression and restoring decency and decorum at the White House… And part of the reason it’s not performative. He looks his age and isn’t as nimble in front of a camera as he once was, and that has fueled a narrative about skill that isn’t rooted in reality.

Alas, for millions of Americans, government is a TV show, and they always have the remote control in their hands, eager to change the channel. Many have already forgotten that when Biden took office in January 2021, COVID was killing thousands of Americans every day, unemployment was rampant, and the economy was in a deep recession.

Today, the pandemic is pretty much under control and the job market is the strongest it has been in over 50 years. Thanks in large part to the Democrats’ post-COVID stimulus package, tens of millions of people have paying jobs that two years ago didn’t have. Therefore, in some sectors of the economy, the challenge today is the shortage of labor and not the lack of jobs.

But yes, rising prices are a bigger issue, even as the semi-hysterical media coverage has reached downright comical proportions. My favorite blogger, Kevin Drum, put it this way: “High inflation is bad, but not as bad as high unemployment. After all, would you rather have a job with higher prices or be unemployed with stable prices? The question answers itself.