Joe Biden became the oldest president in American history on the day he was inaugurated in 2021, two weeks after a mob incited by his immediate predecessor (at the time the second-oldest president in history) had stormed the U.S. Capitol. Even from this brief historical distance, it's difficult to recapture the total insanity of that moment, which many reasonably normal people (to say nothing of people outside that category) watched in a state of high anxiety: Would Donald Trump actually surrender the presidency and leave Washington, or were we about to see another unexpected and dreadful turn of the screw — a violent assault on the inauguration, or perhaps even an attempt to make the "Storm" forecast by the QAnon cult's prophets a reality?
Those two facts — Biden's advanced age and the bizarre circumstances of his ascension to the White House, both of which had no historical precedent — have defined his presidency since its moment of conception, and in all likelihood will do so through its demise, whenever that comes. Speculation that Biden would be a one-term president, supposedly buttressed by unnamed sources in his inner circle, began well before he was elected and has recurred with at least as much regularity as the seasonal arrival of migratory birds (which is no longer a sure thing on our burning planet). At first, this vague thesis held that Biden was a "transitional president," an avuncular human placeholder who would allow America to turn down the heat on the political boiler in our collective sub-cellar and get back to some semblance of normalcy after the Trump years. Oh, and also: He was way too old.
