PETER VAN ONSELEN: The US election is shaping up to be Weekend at Bernie’s II vs The Empire Strikes Back – and it’s the showdown nobody wants

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

It was the former United Nations ambassador’s first public appearance since dropping out of the presidential race. She couldn’t even bring herself to ask her supporters to back Trump in.  

In the pantheon of worst-ever sequels, this year’s United States presidential showdown is right up there. 

An ageing and cognitively challenged President Joe Biden taking on Donald Trump. 

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

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 of age. 

It’s Weekend at Bernie’s II (yes there was a sequel) verses The Empire Strikes Back

Not that Trump is much better in the ageing stakes. He’s nearly 78 years old which means if he wins and serves a full term he’ll be even older than Biden is now at 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) verses The Empire Strikes Back. A box office flop verses a sequel in which the baddies won. 

This script casts Biden as Bernie and Trump as Darth Vader: Two poor options for the next leader of the free world, as American presidents were once described with reverence.

Four years ago I was dismissive of attacks on Biden’s cognitive capacities, but it has become increasingly clear there is now something to the allegations. 

What will he look like four years from now if he does get a second term? Assuming Biden survives that long in the job and doesn’t need to be replaced by his Vice President Kamala Harris, who has underwhelmed during her first term. 

If Biden wins again he’ll need to outlive the average life expectancy in the United States, otherwise the White House will be forced to announce the quiet passing of the President a few years from now, having peacefully slipped away in his sleep. 

In contrast, if Trump wins the baddies are back, just like in the Star Wars sequel. Biden’s important role in ousting Trump four years ago will have been completely undone. 

A return to President Trump could make his first four-year term look positively normal in comparison. It isn’t out of the question that Trump might serve as America’s leader from behind bars, which unbelievably isn’t impossible in the US system. 

But thankfully it’s unlikely. 

No spring chicken. If 77 year old Trump (above) serves another full term he’ll be the oldest President

 Trump is playing the role of Darth Vader in this year’s Presidential showdown

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

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

I watched it again the other day and still laughed, but that probably says more about me. Yet there is nothing funny about watching Biden doing a real life Weekend at Bernie’s impersonation, as his verbal stumbles are increasingly reflecting his declining physical state. 

Biden’s performances are becoming lifeless. 

Joe Biden’s decline is becoming all too obvious as voters consider a Donald Trump comeback (Joe Biden pictured)

The latest attempt to shield President Biden now sees his advisers crowd around him every time he steps on and off an aircraft, in a bid to deflect attention from his old man shuffle. 

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

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

The fact that it hasn’t at this election speaks to the problems within the US major party system, the polarised state of America’s political culture and the ongoing decline of the US, both domestically and abroad.