Biden is Old as F
In our hyper-reductive age, it is perhaps his strongest asset
Politics move quickly. Americans have attention spans like goldfish. The media trend toward laziness, and just about everyone likes neat, simple stories. Whole decades, given enough time, get mushed down in the collective memory into a few moments. Ask your average millennial about the 60s and they’ll mention the Kennedy assassination, Civil Rights, Vietnam, Hippies, and the moon landing. Maybe.
Bill Clinton won the presidency twice, was leader of the free world for eight years, and is still alive. Despite all of this, he is fast becoming a footnote, a sax player synonymous with the 90s, Boomer culture, charming and impeached for some sex thing. Even though many things we grapple with today, from the poisonous culture of the far right to Vladimir Putin and the Taliban really got rolling in the Clinton years, he is barely associated with them today.
Presidential candidates get even less serious consideration. Most of them are dismissed out of hand, and the ones who do make the debate stage are often defined by their rivals early on. Howard Dean screamed and was suddenly a lunatic. Kerry was a flip-flopper. Romney was elitist. Hillary was shrill. Even those who went on to win the presidency never fully escaped their early caricatures. Nixon was devious. Carter…
