Who’s more mental — Biden or Trump?

A friend of mine — at least I think she’s a friend — asks me why I don’t opine on Joe Biden’s age (because I am a year older than Biden, and that might give me unique insight into the, um, aging issue).

I do. First, it’s not the aging issue.

It’s the mental issue.

I am a year older than Biden, I am almost 5 years older than Donald J. Trump, and two weeks younger than Bernie Sanders.

Sanders, Trump, and I were all born in New York City — Bernie in Brooklyn, Donald in Queens, me in The Bronx. That is immaterial, just a fun fact. Joe was born in Scranton, Pa.

Ronald Reagan left the presidency when he was 77 — 4 years younger than Biden is today. After his presidency, we learned from his son Ron, Jr., that his father began suffering from Alzheimer’s disease while in office. (That claim was disputed by another son, Michael, plus a biographer.)  

The Guardian reported, “Their father’s mannerisms while in office – including stumbling over his words, his occasional falling asleep in public, his weak memory – led to much speculation about how early on dementia had set in.”

Some of that sounds familiar.

On the Biden “pro” side, most of us believe old age brings wisdom. That’s a benefit of experience.

On the Biden “con” side, he repeatedly confuses names, wanders when off-PrompTer, and can’t seem to walk up the ramp to Air Force One even when he is walking slowly and holding the handrail. 

He walks stiff-leggedly, and has trouble with arm movement.

Me, too, on all counts. But does that reflect on intellect?

Let’s take the physical stuff first.

Trouble walking?

Franklin D. Roosevelt couldn’t walk at all. 

He was in a wheelchair, as is Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, and U.S. Congresswoman Tammy Duckworth. You may not like their politics, but their physical disability doesn’t affect their ability to reason, and act.

I walk with a cane, the result of two failed surgeries to correct a busted quadriceps. Even before that, my walking pace had begun to slow down, and my knees don’t function well when I have to pick up something I dropped. Thanks to rotor cuff problems, I can no longer throw a ball for any distance. The body breaks down over time. So does the mind, but faster for some than others.

Trump moves pretty well, plays golf, but he is overweight. Biden is trim and rides a bike, which is easier than golf.

Sanders moves pretty well and is the most articulate and verbally smooth of the three. His brain synapses are firing like Formula One spark plugs.

Sanders gives the appearance of being razor sharp and appearances count.

They count against Biden.

Now — mental issues.

As I was talking to my friend, I wanted to make a point about police states, about how comfortable I felt walking around (fill in the blank).

I blanked on the name of the country, but I could tell my friend it was next to Algeria, right across from Spain.

“Morocco?” she said.

“Yes, and I was in the capital — it has five letters,” I told her, unable to fish up the name from memory — “and I felt fine walking around at night.” I then told her, in some depth, about my experiences there and eventually the name of the capital, Rabat, popped into my mind.

My memory failed on two specifics, but functioned perfectly well on the depth of my experience.

The loss of particular words began when I was in my 40s. The memory failure was rare — my memory was never excellent — but happened more frequently as I aged. I was once an excellent speller, an instinctive speller, but now I actually have to think as I write, is it gaurentee or guarantee? (It is the latter.)

But do those gaps impede my ability to reason?

Some who read my columns would say “Yes,” when they disagree with my opinions. But, really, most would say I move from point A to point B to point C smoothly, and my conclusions are logical, even if disagreeable.

What worries me about Biden is not that he can’t remember a quote from Lincoln. What worries me is he can’t read it off a 3×5 card in his hand.

We all know he is, and always has been, subject to gaffes. He’s also subject to a form of malapropism, in which he confuses names, rather than words. He has done that repeatedly, but how serious is it?

I don’t know, but his refusal to take advantage of the year’s largest TV audience with a Super Bowl interview is very troubling.

In recent months, Trump has been caught mixing up names, most notably using Nancy Pelosi when he meant Nikki Haley. Not just once, but several times.

The centrist The Hill website actually claims that in recent counts, Trump has more gaffes than Biden, and summarizes them here.

The Hill distinguishes these gaffes from the incredible amount of bald face lying Trump does, most especially his claims that he won the 2020 election, when anyone with half a brain knows he did not. 

If you believe it was rigged — you are a dupe. As Trump’s hand-picked Attorney General Bill Barr stated flatly, “We have not seen fraud on a scale that could have effected a different outcome in the election.”

In 2016, remember, candidate Trump whined that the election was rigged — until he was declared the winner.

There is little doubt that Biden’s failings are more obvious, and more serious, in that he is the President of the United States, and not a former TV reality show host facing 91 felony counts.

Each candidate is impaired. With Biden, it might be more mental.

With Trump, it is more moral.

In his lucid moments, Biden cares about facts. Most of his decisions — not all — are reasonable.

Some of Trump’s positions — by no means all — are reasonable, but they often are transactional. He praises foreign despots — Putin, Kim, Xi — because they “like” him, he says. The deluded, needy fool thinks they “like” him.

This time, I throw in with bumbling, “sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory,” in the words of special counsel Robert Hur.

That was intended as a slur, but I will choose Biden over a bullying, narcissistic, convicted sexual abuser and liar, as proven by his defamation conviction.