Albert Hunt is urging President Joe Biden to announce that he will not run for reelection and will devote himself instead to the legal defense and personal rehabilitation of his son Hunter.  

“The particulars in the tax evasion charges against Hunter Biden are sleazy,” Hunt writes. “I don’t know if the case is strong or whether the prosecutor felt pressure to bring it; I suspect if his father wasn’t running for president, we never would have heard of it.”

What is evident is that Hunter is a deeply troubled man, deep in debt and probably in need of strong support.

“His father can provide that.”

Well, one thinks, why not?

President Biden is hardly the indispensable man. He could be easily replaced by a younger, fresher face. He was once the only Democrat who could win against Donald Trump, but now he is just about the only one who would lose to him if the election were held today. There is no signature legislative program that is uniquely his. Any Democrat could campaign on the usual mix of bigger government to be paid for by taxing the rich. The actual Biden record, of course, is bigger government paid for with more inflation that isn’t even a nuisance to the rich.  

But it would be hard to make “Can’t win ’em all” into a knockout campaign slogan.

On foreign policy, Biden is a standard issue globalist who can be relied upon to keep on keeping on. Until, that is, it doesn’t work any longer. As in Afghanistan. And, given the way things are going in Ukraine, it is hard to imagine voters who are motivated by foreign policy issues going with Biden in the belief that they are backing a winner.

No voter is thinking that if Joe Biden leaves the scene, we will be at war in a matter of weeks, if not days. He was elected as a caretaker. Hard to imagine him saying to the voters, “Didn’t I caretake good? Don’t you want four more years of the same?” (RELATED: It’s Joe Biden’s Fault He Can’t Get the Ukraine Funding)

If his record in office doesn’t inspire confidence and motivate one to vote for Biden’s reelection, there is also the matter of his age, about which there is not much that can be done, even by the most gifted of political image-makers. 

Biden has gotten old.  

He didn’t mean to, but it happened anyway. He is in his 80s. His young 80s, to be sure. But 80 is a long way from the new 60s or even the new 70s. Biden acts his age, and that is troubling to many voters, young and old. Perhaps especially to voters who are old and think, “I wouldn’t want that job even if it does come with the White House and that airplane.”

President Biden soldiers on, and while it is possible to admire his grit, there is something selfish about it. After all, it is not — as they say — just about him.

Meanwhile, his son is looking at criminal charges that, if he is found guilty, could get him as much as 17 years in prison. The automatic response of almost any father confronted by this would be to think, “What can I do? I’ll do anything.”

And mean it.

Well, in President Biden’s case, he could pardon his son.  

It would finish him politically, of course. But so what? He’s had a good run. Gone as far in his chosen field as it is possible to go. There are no more mountains to climb or rivers to cross. Just thousands more hands to shake and forgettable speeches to give. His son, meanwhile, fights off the prosecutorial wolves and tries to stay sober and out of jail.  

If President Biden quit now and made way for someone younger and more electable who then won and kept Trump out of the White House, he would be a hero to his party and, perhaps, to his son. And he would be an example of selflessness that might even be an inspiration to other fathers.

And who knows? There might even be a book deal in it.