It must be exhausting for Democrats to keep making excuses for President Joe Biden’s fumbles and bumbles. Yet they keep circling the wagons to prop up the 81-year-old man they want to keep in office another four years.

It isn’t good for America, and it’s especially not good for Biden.

The Wall Street Journal is the latest target of salvos from the White House. It’s crime? A lengthy story (“Behind Closed Doors, Biden Shows Signs of Slipping”) based on what the WSJ  said were more than 45 interviews over several months which portrayed Biden as distracted and mumbling. As reported, there were examples of Biden reading from notes in meetings on Ukraine aid, sometimes deferring questions to aides and at times speaking too softly to be audible or closing his eyes.

Baloney, said the White House. Partisan politics. Another Republican smear campaign.

But the New York Times has leaned in on Biden’s age and its signs as well, also earning the ire of Team Biden.

The White House can deny, defend and deflect all it wants, but Biden is doing a fair job of making his age an issue. According to the New York Post, Biden claimed Thursday that he has “known” Vladimir Putin “for over 40 years” — despite Russia’s president having served as an undercover KGB intelligence officer through the entire 1980s.

“I’ve known him for over 40 years. He’s concerned me for 40 years. He’s not a decent man,” Biden, 81, told ABC News anchor David Muir during an interview in France at the Normandy American Cemetery to commemorate the 80th anniversary of D-Day.

In a Time magazine interview late last month, Biden confused the names of Russia and China’s leaders.

“No, because here’s the deal. There’s a difference. I made it clear to Putin from the very beginning that — I’m not, we’re not engaging in,” Biden answered before trailing off briefly.

“For example, Trump wants a 10% tariff on everything. That will raise the price of everything in America,” he said.

An editor’s note from Time reads: “Biden appeared to mean Xi here, not Putin.”

There’ve been more verbal missteps, and Americans are getting nervous. An NBC News poll taken in February showed 62% of voters have “major concerns” about Biden’s age.

But have Democrats pulling the oars for Biden as the presumptive defender of democracy against Donald Trump considered what it’s doing to the man?

Biden’s 81, and while he’s not as age-defying as Mick Jagger (80 years old), he, like almost anyone in that decade, is feeling the years. There’s nothing wrong with that, but there is something wrong with not recognizing the toll the job is taking.

Being the leader of the free world is not an easy gig. The stress, the pressure, the near-constant crises erupting around the globe (Ukraine, Russia, the Israel-Hamas war, Haiti, to name a few) and uneasy relationships with foreign powers such as China are always top of mind. As are the problems at home, from Americans angry over inflation, anti-Israel protests on college campuses, to the immigration debacle at the border.

Photos of past presidents taken at the beginning of their term compared with the day they leave office show clearly: the job ages the man.

Of course Democrats want to keep the White House, but at what cost to the president?

Editorial cartoon by Gary Varvel (Creators Syndicate)