Juggling dangerous objects with Ronald & Nancy Reagan, Tip O’Neil, Barbara Bush, and Howard Baker in the audience front row.

Why not the Cryptkeeper?

The current democrat frontrunner, Joe Biden was born November 20, 1942. He is currently 76 years old. The month of the next presidential election, he’ll be 78. If he were elected and ran for a second term in 2024, he’d be 82. If he were re-elected and served out two terms he’d be leaving office at 86.

Another prominent contender, Bernie Sanders, was born September 8, 1941. Bernie was born before the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor! He’s a year older than Biden. In 2020, Bernie will be 79, in 2024, 83. He’d leave office, after two terms, aged 87(!)

Now, bear in mind, that Donald Trump, born June 14, 1946, set a new record as the oldest man, at age 70, elected president in History.

Ronald Reagan was considered remarkably well-preserved and was constantly mocked for his age by his opponents and accused of being senile and of napping through meetings and so on. Reagan, born February 6, 1911, was 69 when elected in 1980. He left office at age 78, the same age Joe Biden would be when entering. Ronald Reagan was, indubitably, an extraordinarily vigorous and physically gifted man, but he was widely recognized as slowing down and showing his age in the last couple of years of his presidency. Ronald Reagan was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s at age 83.

Obviously rich men and big cheese public officials live longer, but the average life expectancy of male Americans is only 76.9.

What are the odds that either of these two, if elected, would even live out two terms? Not great, I’d say.

And even assuming President Joe or Bernie lives through nearly an entire decade from now, think about it, what are the odds that he will remain healthy and lucid enough to cope with the stresses, responsibilities, and long hours of the Presidency?

Most people in their 80s, if not already “shaking hands with the groundhog,” as Leo Hobbs used to put it, are nodding away their days, napping in their rocking chairs, not in the White House, but in some assisted living facility.

All this shows, I’d argue, that people younger than 60 have no clear idea what old age is really like, and just how many things can go wrong for you. And, it shows, too, just how feckless and irresponsible democrats really are.

HT: John Anderson.

Brad Meltzer reveals, in the New York Daily News, that Ronald Reagan while serving as President was another American who habitually carried a concealed handgun.

[T]here I was, on my tour of Secret Service headquarters. The agents had taken me into a small museum they have on the premises. It’s a room lined with photos of Presidents and archival exhibit cases filled with Secret Service artifacts. A newspaper with a “Kennedy Dead” headline. A replica of Lee Harvey Oswald’s rifle. The pistol used to try to kill President Gerald Ford. They even have the actual car door from the limo when Reagan was shot.

It was an eerie keepsake for sure. But not nearly as eerie as the next detail they told me. We were talking about Reagan and that day he was shot. Then one of the agents offered this secret: When Reagan was President, he carried his own gun.

I couldn’t believe it.

“It’s true,” they said. A .38. Reagan used to hide it in his briefcase and take it on Air Force One.

Whatever you think of Reagan, you have to admit, he had a black belt in badassery.

The Daily News illustrated a Smith & Wesson Bodyguard, but the article does not make clear that anyone identified the particular model or caliber preferred by President Reagan.

Hat tip to Theo.

Hat tip to Karen L. Myers.

Ron Paul admits Gingrich told the truth but argues for timidity. Romney agrees and names-drops the Israeli PM to buttress his personal authority. Gingrich sticks by his guns, notes that Ronald Reagan provoked important changes in the world by defying similar demands for more diplomatic statements and declares that he’s a Reaganite. Gingrich wins.

Ready to charge.

William Kristol rather eloquently expresses American conservatives’ yearning for a decisive, game-changing victory next year, a decisive victory capable of renewing both the country’s morale and economic prospects and delivering the country for another generation from socialism and the misrule of sophisters, calculators, and economists, but warns that the fates are not going to be as kind as we would wish.

For every Southern boy 14 years old, not once but whenever he wants it, there is the instant when it’s still not yet two o’clock on that July afternoon in 1863, the brigades are in position behind the rail fence, the guns are laid and ready in the woods and the furled flags are already loosened to break out and Pickett himself with his long oiled ringlets and his hat in one hand probably and his sword in the other looking up the hill waiting for Longstreet to give the word and it’s all in the balance, it hasn’t happened yet, it hasn’t even begun yet, it not only hasn’t begun yet but there is still time for it not to begin against that position and those circumstances which made more men than Garnett and Kemper and Armstead and Wilcox look grave yet it’s going to begin, we all know that, we have come too far with too much at stake and that moment doesn’t need even a 14-year-old boy to think This time. Maybe this time with all this much to lose and all this much to gain: Pennsylvania, Maryland, the world, the golden dome of Washington itself to crown with desperate and unbelievable victory the desperate gamble, the cast made two years ago .  .  .

—William Faulkner, Intruder in the Dust

For every American conservative, not once but whenever he wants it, it’s always the evening of November 4, 1980, the instant when we knew Ronald Reagan, the man who gave the speech in the lost cause of 1964, leader of the movement since 1966, derided by liberal elites and despised by the Republican establishment, the moment when we knew—he’d won, we’d won, the impossible dream was possible, the desperate gamble of modern conservatism might pay off, conservatism had a chance, America had a chance. And then, a decade later—the Cold War won, the economy revived, America led out of the abyss, we’d come so far with so much at stake—conservatism vindicated, America restored, a desperate and unbelievable victory for the cast made so many years ago against such odds.

But that was then, and this is now. Now is 2012, and it seems clear that 2012 isn’t going to be another 1980.

He’s right. We haven’t got a Reagan. I think we are going to have to hope that any Republican can decisively defeat Barack Obama and that any Republican (even one from Massachusetts) will be obliged to run and govern as an arch conservative. While we will not have a Reagan, we can have an administration, like Reagan’s, drawn heavily from the Conservative Movement and dedicated to bringing about a fundamental change in direction.

Fortunately, the democrats have not the ground, the advantage in strength, or the artillery that General Meade had, and if 2012 is not going to be 1980, I think we can feel safe that neither will it be July 3, 1863.

Fireworks at Chicago’s Navy Pier.

Republicans believe every day is the Fourth of July, but the democrats believe every day is April 15.

-Ronald Reagan.