By JAMES RICKMAN
Los Alamos

My father died at Joe Biden’s age. The end came astonishingly quickly: a cancer diagnosis, several second opinions, a funeral nine months later. My mother was five years older than my father when she died, but I didn’t envy those extra years; dementia is a cruel thief that steals a person’s judgement, abilities and, eventually, their dignity.

I still recall when I noticed the weird change in Mom’s eyes that came before the dementia diagnosis, but after the onset of the relentlessly intensifying confusion that was so frustrating for her. I see the same subtle shift in the eyes of our president, and it concerns me. I don’t think I’m alone.

America, in my opinion, still holds the greatest promise of any nation on Earth. We have a legacy of great leaders who have maintained this promise for nearly two and a half centuries. A great leader is not merely measured by past accomplishments, but rather by future potential.

In a country with tens of millions of potentially great leaders, it seems odd that our choice for president this cycle has boiled down to a pair of crochety, thread-bare, morally ambivalent octogenarians.

America’s firmly entrenched and fiercely guarded two-party political system has devolved into an oligarchy masquerading as “democracy.” The parties, not the people, vet and select the next heir apparent in political contests from the local to the national level, ensuring that the party bosses and their allies all received a cut of the action.

It is no wonder that a huge number of Americans are defecting to independent or alternative parties, and that the young folks are opting out of elections altogether or ticking and talking on their social media platforms about how disenfranchised they feel.

Back in 2016, the Democratic Party bosses did their level best to justify why their heir apparent was superior to The People’s Choice. We all saw how that went.

There is still time to dispense with all the sugar coating and pontificating about why a president who wears an adult diaper is somehow superior to lesser-known candidates that haven’t yet mastered the secret handshake or how to wheel and deal with the Big Boys in the smoke-filled rooms of Power.

Unfortunately, based on the current course of both party’s machinery, I suspect we’ll be feeling an awkward sense of Déjà vu come Wednesday, November 6.