Dear Reader, 

With the first of the general election presidential debates still more than two months away, is it too soon to talk about them? Perhaps. But I’ve been thinking about those upcoming clashes in recent days and listening to friends ponder how they will play out. 

Illuminating or not, presidential debates have been a part of my political education since I was a teenager. With one exception, I believe I’ve watched every single one since Reagan’s shaky first performance against Walter Mondale, which caused people to wonder about the incumbent’s mental acuity. In the follow-up, when asked whether his age should be an issue, the 73-year-old Reagan famously deflected those concerns with a perfectly-delivered one-liner: “I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent’s youth and inexperience.” Everyone laughed, and Reagan won in a landslide. 

Both contenders this year are older than Reagan was in 1984. The question of mental acuity is back on the table in large part because, oddly, Trump has put it there. He has placed a large bet that his own cognitive ability compares favorably to Joe Biden’s. I’ll come back to this in a moment.