A Push for Normalcy Tests the Gerontocracy

Yesterday afternoon, President Joe Biden hosted a good old-fashioned bill-signing ceremony at the White House. Before an audience of several dozen in the State Dining Room, the president celebrated the long-awaited enactment of a postal-reform bill. After his brief remarks, a large, bipartisan group of lawmakers crowded around Biden as he put pen to paper on the legislation. They huddled in close, as politicians do, silently jostling for prime position in the photo. None of them wore a mask, although House Speaker Nancy Pelosi carried one around her wrist like a handbag.

The event was a taste of the normalcy that Biden has been trying to create lately. Reality intruded this morning, however, when Pelosi announced that she had tested positive for COVID-19, becoming the highest-ranking government official to do so since former President Donald Trump’s near-death bout with the virus in October 2020. The 82-year-old speaker stood maskless right beside the 79-year-old Biden yesterday; she also attended an even larger, mostly mask-free event at the White House a day earlier that featured Biden and former President Barack Obama.

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