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Monday
As Joe Biden continues to chalk up unlikely wins while wrestling with a party uninterested in governing, his opponents, some of his allies, and several mainstream media outlets are obsessing about his age. After the president tripped on a sandbag left on a stage, for instance, the New York Times ominously intoned, “Anyone can trip at any age, but for an 80-year-old president, it inevitably raises unwelcome questions.”
“Raises unwelcome questions,” I’ll point out, are weasel words which fail to consider a number of factors, including the benefits of immense experience and a calm demeanor.
Anyway, the complaints brings to mind Jitterbug Perfume (1984), my favorite novel by the whacky Tom Robbins. In it, a king rebels against his culture’s discomfort with elderly rulers. In this case, discomfort leads to death since the king is executed upon “the debut of wrinkles or gray hairs.” As the novel explains,
Regarding its rulers as semidivine—god-men upon whom the course of nature depended—the clan believed widespread catastrophes would result from the gradual enfeeblement of the ruler and the final extinction of his powers in death. The only way to avert those calamities was to kill the king as soon as he showed symptoms of decay, so that his soul might be transferred to a vigorous young successor before it had been impaired.
Upon finding his first white hair, King Alobar suddenly concludes that the whole system is unfair. And he’s got reason to since he has been a very successful king. As his consort Wren points out, he has ruled not through his physical prowess but through his intelligence:
There are men inside these city walls more powerfully built than you, Alobar; more adept with the spear. Men who can run faster, hurl a stone farther, face an awesome enemy with an equal absence of trembling, and pacify a harem with as sturdy a shaft. But you, well, while I cannot imagine how you acquired it, you have a brain. Time and time again, you have demonstrated your unusual ability to see inside of men and to interpret the silent pleas they aim at the stars. In the past, many kings have ruled this people. You have governed them.
We learn from Wren that the village necromancer—which is to say, the so-called expert—resents what he sees as an encroachment on his domain:
The heroics of past rulers only kept your kingdom in a state of agitation. You have calmed it. And Noog resents you for that, because as a result of your reasonable leadership, the necromancer is less necessary and less admired.
We’ve seen what four years of constant agitation brought us. Biden’s promise to return us to normalcy should be a relief to all those who prefer their leaders to be more interested in problem solving than in reality television-style theatrics.
Our white-haired president has brought back competence and integrity to the White House. Anyone who wants something else would do well to remember Aesop’s fable of “The Frogs Who Wished for a King.”
