PETER VAN ONSELEN: The US election is shaping up to be a weekend of Bernie’s II vs. The Empire Strikes Back, and it’s the showdown no one wants

This week, former Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley reluctantly said she’s voting for Donald Trump… but only because Joe Biden is the alternative.

It was the former United Nations ambassador’s first public appearance since he dropped out of the presidential race. He didn’t even dare to ask his followers to support Trump.

In the pantheon of the worst aftermaths in history, this year’s presidential showdown in the United States is right up there.

An aging and cognitively challenged President Joe Biden facing off against Donald Trump.

The mere fact that the former president who encouraged Americans to storm the Capitol is again the Republican presidential candidate should evoke fear and hatred.

It says a lot about how unimpressed Americans are with Biden that Trump is a serious contender. Biden is seeking a second term and four more years in the White House at 81 years old.

It’s not that Trump is much better when it comes to aging. He is almost 78 years old, which means that if he wins and serves a full term, he will be even older than Biden now by the end of his presidency.

Biden is already the oldest president in US history.

It’s Weekend at Bernie’s II (yes, there was a sequel) verse The Empire Strikes Back. A box office failure versus a sequel in which the bad guys won.

This script casts Biden as Bernie and Trump as Darth Vader: two poor choices for the next leader of the free world, as American presidents were once reverently described.

Four years ago he was dismissive of attacks on Biden’s cognitive abilities, but it is increasingly clear that there is now something to the accusations.

What will it be like in four years if he gets a second term? Assuming Biden survives that long in office and doesn’t need to be replaced by his Vice President Kamala Harris, who has failed during his first term.

If Biden wins again, he will have to outlive the average life expectancy in the United States; Otherwise, the White House will be forced to announce the president’s silent death in a few years, having disappeared peacefully while he slept.

On the contrary, if Trump wins, the bad guys will return, like in the Star Wars sequel. The important role Biden played in overthrowing Trump four years ago will have been completely undone.

A return for President Trump could make his first four-year term seem positively normal by comparison. It is not out of the question that Trump could serve as America’s leader behind bars, which is incredibly not impossible in the American system.

But fortunately it is unlikely.

The original weekend at Bernie’s was a hit in 1989. When it came out all those years ago, Biden was the same age I am now, which, by the way, is not young.

I remember the movie well because, as a callow 13-year-old, watching two guys carry a dead body for two hours to save their jobs (and their lives) seemed like fun.

I watched it again the other day and I still laughed, but that probably says more about me. However, there’s nothing funny about watching Biden make a real-life weekend of imitating Bernie, as his verbal stumbles increasingly reflect his declining physical condition.

Biden’s performances are becoming subdued.

In the latest attempt to protect President Biden, his advisers now crowd around him every time he gets on and off a plane, in an attempt to divert attention from his old man behavior.

Whether or not Biden is still fit for office has become THE issue of the campaign, even though Trump is clearly unfit for office for many other, more substantive reasons.

Surely what was once a great democracy can do better than this? A nation of 333 million people must be able to offer better presidential candidates.

The fact that he did not do so in this election speaks to the problems within America’s major party system, the polarized state of American political culture, and the continued decline of the United States, both internally and externally.