Don't go away mad, Joe – just go away

Joe Biden says he's the most qualified person in the country to be president. Well, Joe, if it were about paper qualifications, you'd have an argument. You have an East Coast (if not Ivy League) sheepskin. You've been in the Senate and warmed the veep's chair. You've run for president.

You've been around, no question about that, and for a long time. A very long time. That's what you've done. What you have not done is anything worth talking about. We all admire your dental and hair work, and we're duly impressed with your wife's doctorate in education. We're not so taken with the way you ran the Anita Hill hearings, your putting your hands all over other men's daughters in public places, your lifting other people's words and not giving attribution, or your being wrong on just about everything in foreign policy and national security for the last four decades. Nothing comes to mind that recommends you, Joe, and we don't want another president who needs a teleprompter to tell him what to say, or a line of interns in the wings to take care of his personal qualification. You guys on the left, Joe, don't seem to grasp that being president is serious business. You keep putting up people whose flaws make Richard Nixon look shiny – people whose personal lives have been tawdry, petty, bullying, and ugly. People like you, Joe. Well qualified, but with nothing of substance to recommend them. Bow out gracefully. Go home and enjoy the pretend adulation of family and neighbors. Retire. Get out of the spotlight. If you ever had a chance at the big prize, you blew it long ago.