by Dov Fischer
We all come to a time when it is time to take stock. During my years at three major law firms, I barely remember any attorney there who was late into his or her sixties. The hours are demanding and grueling. If the attorney is not that good, he or she would not still have been there past the early forties anyway. The firms are not shy about handing out walking papers because long lines of applicants await a chance at those same high-paying jobs. Moreover, because those lines of vultures are so long, and those applicants are so hungry, the pressure on those with the jobs is intense because “One wrong move, and out you go.” But unlike the aphorism: “and do not turn the lights off, nor close the door behind you, because your replacement is sitting in the reception area ready to pounce in the moment you leave.”
So, if the weaker attorneys are gone by their forties or fifties, that would leave only the strong ones to be there into the sixties. But the strong ones make boatloads of money, in the many millions, and the cost-benefit analysis weighing the hours and pressure versus the opportunity to retire with millions and while still in reasonably good health leads the rest of them to retire by their early sixties. Among the few elders still hanging around at the mega firms, there are only three types of exceptions:
- Those who have lived too hard, spending too much on alcohol, women, alimonies (plural), and playtime. (Think Michael Jackson types.) So they still need the money.
- Those who look ahead and cannot imagine anything else to do with the rest of their lives, whether because (i) they are single and never did anything but practice law or (ii) are married and would rather spend their last days filing motions for Samsung and Microsoft than being cooped up with their spouses, whether being nagged/abused/harangued at home or on “vacation.”
- Those who just cannot let go. Barnacles. They don’t need the money, but they crave more. They need the attention. Having attained the status of “Partner,” they crave the false adoration of junior associates who hope that enough sycophancy will earn them a larger Christmas bonus. They crave ever more money, more status, more attention.
And so it is, in one way or another, in all professions and enterprises from medicine to high tech to store-owning. For some, it is time, and they embrace new opportunities. For others, it is impossible to let go.
In sports — such as in my favorite sport, baseball — it is legend that the great Joe DiMaggio retired a few years before he “should have,” while still in his prime. Why? He had everything and would have even more. By the time his number was called, he had been married to Marilyn Monroe, had been adored not only in New York where his Yankees played, but also in his native San Francisco and throughout America, as well as among his ethnic brothers and sisters of Italian heritage — and by everyone else, too. Simon and Garfunkel would throw his name into the lyrics of one of their greatest songs. So he quit at the top of his game. He had enough money. Enough glory. And, although the Elton John song was about Norma Jean, it actually was Joe DiMaggio’s candle that never stopped glowing.
On the other hand, some other great baseball players played a bit too long. Even — especially — the greats. People like the late and great Babe Ruth, Willie Mays, and Mickey Mantle exemplified staying a bit too long. Why did they stay? Even when their times had come to hang up the cleats, they still were far better than me and all their fans ever could be. They were loved so deeply that, even after their primes, they received cheers every day from fans in the tens of thousands. So they remained in the limelight, kept doing commercials, and kept getting paid handsomely. Having overstayed their places with teams that were top contenders and no longer could carry the weight of high-paid stars who could not produce much anymore, Babe Ruth was traded by the Yankees to the Pittsburgh Pirates, and Willie Mays from the San Francisco Giants back to New York and the Giants’ then-pathetic National League successors, the Mets.
They still drew crowds and awesome cheers from older fans who remembered and never forgot them from 20 years earlier, the years of their boyhoods. Zaydie, my grandfather who had embraced baseball fandom from the day he arrived from Russia as a boy in early 1900s New York, cheered Willie Mays in the 1950s during Zaydie’s early middle age. When the “Say Hey Kid” returned to New York to end his career in 1972 and 1973 with the Mets, Zaydie was ecstatic. “Bereleh (my Yiddish name),” he said. “I would like to bring you to Shea Stadium to see Willie Mays.” (Not to see the Mets, mind you, nor the treasonous Giants who had abandoned Zaydie in 1958 for Frisco.) Like the broken tablets of the Ten Commandments (alternatively, the Ten Pronouncements), which still merited repose in the Ark of the Covenant, these now-broken stars still packed a punch with those who remembered them from boyhood. And they did have their moments. On Babe Ruth’s last day of professional play, he hit three home runs. After all, he still was Babe Ruth. On the other hand, my boyhood hero, The Mick, sadly lingered just long enough to see his lifetime batting average drop to .298, staining his eternal statistical legacy to drop just below the gold standard of .300.
Some fields are different when it comes to retirement. Is one ever too old to write, to speak, to teach students who seek to learn from the wisdom that comes from life experience and decades of learning? I am blessed. Now 70, I am writing as prolifically as I ever did — even more so, as I have been able to drop extraneous foci — and teaching my richest Bible and Judaica classes ever in my life. Not that I am smarter or ever was particularly smart. It’s just that, by age 70, I finally know some stuff. That is the blessing of being a rav (Orthodox rabbi), a pastor, a priest, a judge, a writer, a statesman, a speaker, a scholar. As long as we still are blessed to have our wits about us, and at least some health, we still can contribute. And that is why so many popes, great rabbis, Supreme Court justices, and other scholars are active into their eighties and nineties. It is a blessing.
It is said that Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, then at age 90, was walking back to the Supreme Court one afternoon with his colleague, octogenarian Justice Louis Dembitz Brandeis. As a strikingly lovely woman walked by them, it is said that Holmes remarked to Brandeis: “Oh, if only I could be 80 again.” But their true greatness was in their genius, life experience, and wisdom. By contrast, the current cable TV miniseries, “Clipped,” reminds us of what becomes of octogenarians who cannot accept their reality.
And so we come to Joe Biden. Why in the world won’t he quit on his own, even without being pushed out? For that matter, why didn’t he pass the word a few months ago that he would be passing the torch to a new generation? We all know that the Big Guy has millions upon millions, howsoever attained. He achieved his lifelong goal, the presidency of the United States. There have only been 45 such people. (Grover Cleveland took it twice.) Even the most avid students of American history cannot say with certainty, looking back into legacies, which president served two terms and which only once. John Adams only once. But his son made it, too. And he also served only once. James Polk did a heck of a job, expanding the country, and he served only once. Teddy Roosevelt opted not to seek reelection; by the time he changed his mind four years later, it was too late. William Taft only once. Others of greatness served only once.
Biden could have gone down in history as a very successful president because, even though he was a miserable disaster, history would have seen his time as one of comparative peace because Ukraine and Gaza, though both came from his weakness, will be seen as irrelevant to him. The disgrace of Afghanistan will not be appreciated by history. The border calamity will be traced to Reagan’s mass amnesty and Obama. As much as he messed up the economy, there was no Great Depression or Panic of 1837 or Panic of 1873. History will not blame him for Iran getting nuclear. Biden could have slipped through, lucky as Clinton, not too bruised by history. And he even avoided a Monica Lewinsky — Paula Corbi Jones — Kathleen Willey – Juanita Broaddrick legacy.
So he has the money. He has the legacy. For all his lifetime of lies to aggrandize himself, the one truth — that he held court in the White House for four years — would have outlived all the lies. After all, who really remembers that Andrew Jackson shot people to death in duels or that John Tyler turned coat and joined the Confederacy or Lincoln’s failures or cancelation of Habeas Corpus, Wilson’s racism and suppression of civil liberties, the scandals that pocked Grant’s and Harding’s administrations, and such? Biden made it through to the finish line. So why in the world did he keep running after he had no more breath, trudging forward until he would collapse on the track?
It is a psychological sickness, apart from whatever else is going on in his cerebrum and cerebellum. It is Reason No. 3 as to why some law partners do not leave when the time has come. They crave the attention. They crave the status. They crave the limelight. They crave the money. They cannot retire with dignity. They cannot give it up. And that tells us something very important about Biden:
For Biden, it was never about helping us, the American people. It never was about realizing a vision or pursuing a dream. It always was one and only one thing: an unquenchable thirst for power, for glory, and fame.
I once learned something very important from one of my greatest rabbinic mentors. There is Man, and there is Kovod (Honor-Fame-Glory). Kovod always is running on the race track. Some people spend a lifetime running after Kovod, and they indeed catch up with It, but when they die, Kovod keeps running … away from them. And then there are modest, humble people who live quiet, righteous lives of grace. They stand stationary and never would contemplate running after Kovod, even seek to step aside from Kovod or to run away from It. But when they die, Kovod finally catches up with them.
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Dov Fischer is an author for The American Spectator.
Photo “President Joe Biden” by WFAA.
