Ageism, Politics
It Could Be Worse
At least your memory problems aren’t exposed to public scrutiny
Breaking news: an 80-year-old man mixed up names. He had a lapse of memory when queried under, okay, let’s call it stressful conditions.
Really? What a shocker. For many of us in our 60s, 70s, and beyond, a memory lapse or name/word retrieval happens daily. It’s become such a part of our routine we rarely take notice. The name or word will come; we’ll remember where we stashed the whatever.
The focus of the mild cognitive lapse wasn’t just any octogenarian.
It was Joe Biden — the current president of the United States and global leader.
At issue, as reported by the New York Times, was the report filed by the Justice Department’s Special Counsel, Robert K. Hur, and the decision not to file criminal charges against President Biden for classified materials found at his home in Delaware after he stepped down as vice president in 2017.
But the legal exoneration, while welcomed by the Biden camp and his supporters, came at a cost: raising questions of the president’s recall and mental capacity for a job that requires high-octane cognitive performance.
