Putting our pols to the test | Fred Grimm

I realize that columnist (even “ace columnist”) for the Sun Sentinel does not require the level of intellectual acuity expected of a president.

But if Putin wants to settle bilateral squabbles with a winner-take-all Wordle showdown, “ready” sums up my status in five letters. (No doubt ageists prefer Wordle-ready adjectives like foggy, fried, fusty, dazed, dopey, gimpy, wizen, whiny, rusty, vapid, hoary or dense.)

Admittedly, I ain’t no spring chicken. (Or even an autumnal equinox chicken.) Age shouldn’t matter, except wanna-be-prez Nikki Haley has flogged old-man decrepitude into a national issue.

Clever Nikki figures she can eliminate the two old goats (definitely not an acronym for Greatest Of All Time) favored to win their respective parties’ presidential nominations in 2024 by requiring candidates for federal office over 75 to take a cognition test.

The former South Carolina governor told Fox News that a mandatory competency examination was needed, given that 80-year-old President Joe Biden “didn’t even know where he was the week before.”

Haley artfully didn’t mention the other elderly gent in the equation, the one outpolling her by 54 points among probable Republican primary voters. But recent meandering speeches and erratic social media postings by Donald Trump, who turns 77 next month, have not suggested that Mar-a-Lago is harboring the next “Jeopardy!” champ.

Haley wants federal candidates to take the MoCA test. Being a bit slow on the uptake, I assumed MoCA stood for something like Museum of Creepy Art, not Montreal Cognitive Assessment. (Montreal? Doesn’t sound very America First-ish, Ms. Haley.)

You might recall that Trump once bragged about acing the MoCA, suggesting he was among history’s great thinkers, like Kid Rock, Elvis and Marjorie Taylor Greene. But that was in 2020. Trump, who personifies the cliché “hasn’t gotten any younger,” should modify his MAGA campaign slogan to “make America geriatric again.” (Neurologist Ziad Nasreddine has complained that he developed the MoCA test in 1996 to suss out early indications of Alzheimer’s, not as an old-fart IQ test. But who listens to the actual experts these days?)

Haley’s war on Biden’s brain could well cause other collateral damage among America’s political hierarchy. I doubt the 16 U.S. senators and 27 U.S. representatives over 75 are anxious to test whether their cogs are still cognitive. Especially, the 16 over 80. (Perhaps, defense attorneys for Jan. 6 insurrectionists could argue, their clients mistakenly thought they were assaulting a nursing home.)

If we boomers can survive the ignominious disco era (“stayin’ alive, stayin’ alive” sounded less urgent in 1977), we can get through a humiliating testing crisis. Just as Haley herself persevered when CNN anchor Don Lemon suggested that the 51-year-old presidential candidate was beyond “her prime.”

But if 50-something pols insist on assessing the sagacity of elderly rivals, us old codgers should counter with test regimes measuring other vital attributes of political leadership.

Obviously, an empathy test would expose a certain governor’s most glaring deficiency. Multiple choice question: Should I villainize for political advantage: a) transgender kids, b) immigrants, c) epidemiologists, d) librarians, e) Mickey Mouse. (Ron’s response: all of above.)

A history test, tailored especially for Florida legislators, would tell us how certain lawmakers contextualize the past. Florida joined the confederacy in 1861 because: a) good for tourism, b) Yankee states too woke, c) better college football, d) bondage was a great deal for slaves considering the free room and board.

A DNA ancestry test would also raise new lines of inquiry: a) What the hell do you mean, I’m related to both George Soros and George Santos? b) Wasn’t crossing the Rio Grande a lot like coming over on the Mayflower? c) Didn’t grandma promise I’m descended from English royalty? d) Who says Managua isn’t in County Limerick?

A reading test would help us understand the censors running amok through Florida libraries and classrooms. This book should be banned because: a) haven’t read it but hated the movie version, b) too many big words, c) no pictures, d) Huck Finn was a cross dresser.

A test measuring a politician’s ability to grasp causality would be telling. Private ownership of 400 million guns means a) 43,375 firearm deaths a year could’ve been worse, b) thanks to guns, petty disputes aren’t clogging up the courts, c) exactly what the Founding Fathers had in mind, d) politicians need to churn out more thoughts and prayers.

Here at the Tarpon River Department of Elderly Affairs (not those kind of affairs), we considered whether candidates should also be forced to undergo tests for honesty, ethics and whether they can find their way through a Publix supermarket without a hired guide.

All those proposals were dropped. You can’t get rid of everyone.

Fred Grimm, a longtime resident of Fort Lauderdale, has worked as a journalist in South Florida since 1976. Reach him by email at or on Twitter: @grimm_fred.