This is the title I chose for my personal blog, which is meant to give me an outlet for one of my favorite crafts – writing – plus to use an image from my favorite sport, golf.  Out of college, my first job was as a reporter for the Daily Astorian in Astoria, Oregon, and I went on from there to practice writing in all my professional positions, including as press secretary in Washington, D.C. for a Democrat Congressman from Oregon (Les AuCoin), as an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, as press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and as a private sector lobbyist.  This blog also allows me to link another favorite pastime – politics and the art of developing public policy – to what I write.  I could have called this blog “Middle Ground,” for that is what I long for in both politics and golf.  The middle ground is often where the best public policy decisions lie.  And it is where you want to be on a golf course.

The age of a presidential candidate – Joe Biden – became a major issue again this week.

But, for me, I put it this way:  Both candidates running, Biden and Donald Trump, are old.  And, does age disqualify them automatically?  No.

But, age does raise questions about whether either candidate is up to the nation’s top political job.

However, let me get to the bottom line quickly for me, then engage in more discussion.  If Biden and Trump are the nominees, I will vote for Biden.

The main reason is that Trump is unfit for any political office, given his deranged proclivity for lying incessantly, not to mention breaking various laws so he is under court indictments.

The age issue arose because a special counsel was investigating the fact that Biden had some classified documents in his personal home and garage.  Biden did not dispute the contention, but went beyond his assignment, characterize Biden for not remembering “stuff.”

That prompted New York Times reporter, Paul Krugman, to write this:

“When the news broke about the special counsel’s hit job — his snide, unwarranted, obviously politically motivated slurs about President Biden’s memory — I found myself thinking about my mother.  

‘What year did she die?  It turned out that I didn’t know offhand; I knew that it was after I moved from Princeton to CUNY, because I was regularly commuting out to New Jersey to see her, but before the pandemic.  I actually had to look into my records to confirm that she died in 2017.

“I’ll bet that many readers are similarly vague about the dates of major life events.  You remember the circumstances, but not necessarily the precise year.  And whatever you think of me, I’m pretty sure I don’t write or sound like an old man.  The idea that Biden’s difficulty in pinning down the year of his son’s death shows his incapacity — in the middle of the Gaza crisis! — is disgusting.”

Krugman also reported that he had an hour-long off-the-record meeting with Biden in August, and while he couldn’t talk about the content, he said Biden was “perfectly lucid, with a good grasp of events.”

 Krugman also gets the right to the point.

“And my God, consider Biden’s opponent.  When I listen to Donald Trump’s speeches, I find myself thinking about my father, who died in 2013 (something else I had to look up).  During his last year, my father suffered from sundowning: he was lucid during the day, but would sometimes become incoherent and aggressive after dark.

“If we’re going to be doing amateur psychological diagnoses of elderly politicians, shouldn’t we be talking about a candidate who has confused Nikki Haley with Nancy Pelosi, and whose ranting and raving sometimes reminds me of my late father on a bad evening?”

There, Krugman said it. 

Trump is worse than Biden and I hope voters render that verdict later this year.