The world’s premier periodical on the global political economy, Britain’s 180-year-old Economist, is joining the crescendo of voices calling for 81-year-old American President Joe Biden to bow out of the presidential race in 2024. (Founded in the 1840s, the Economist‘s editors started considering the challenges of “old people in power” from nearly its beginning, as shown below.)
Most societies have been inclined, or liable, to be ruled by older people. The hope is that wisdom and a cool head compensate for any lack of vim and aggression. But there is a darker view of having old people in power. From 1843 magazine https://t.co/zYw8dDWf9n
— The Economist (@TheEconomist) July 4, 2024
The Economist — an analytical, data-driven publication that currently throws its support in England behind the Labour Party’s Sir Keir Starmer — says that Americans are being denied a reasonable option to lead their country, with both the Republican Party and the Democratic Party offering candidates who fail conspicuously to meet the moment.
[Wikipedia describes the Economist as centrist, saying it suffers relatively few accusations of political bias while championing many aspects of American free market capitalism that are espoused in part by both political parties, including “free markets, free trade, free immigration, deregulation, and globalization.”]
In a paragraph that extols the ideal of democratic choice while lamenting its limitations, the magazine asserts that Biden is, as demonstrated in his recent disastrous debate performance, “incapable” of executing his duties in a way commensurate with a hoped-for American “renewal.”
In the same paragraph, the Economist bludgeons Trump with a description that encapsulates what it views as his autocratic threats, disrespect for the rule of law and chaos-inducing economic policies. Trump is labelled “unspeakable.”
“The virtue of democracy is that voters can choose who governs them, but Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump offer a choice between the incapable and the unspeakable. America’s renewal needs to start now. There could be no better way than for the Democrats to choose a new candidate to defeat Mr. Trump.”
The Economist
The word, according to the very English Cambridge Dictionary, describes something “too bad or shocking to be expressed in words.” As an example, it contemplates as unspeakable the “sufferings of war.”