Now, that’s funny.

I was taking a hike the other night, after work, listening to the news, which is a crazy place these days to try to find funny.

Still, there it was, in my headphones — the slimy and, yes, evil Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, accusing President Joe Biden of engaging in “a rant — a rant!” about voting rights in America.

As in all things Bidenesque, the humor here was relative.

The very idea of saying that President No. 46 could possibly be accused of going on a rant — speaking or shouting at length in a wild, impassioned way — as compared with the all-day, everyday rant for four long years that was the verbal style of President No. 45, is objectively absurd.

Plus, laugh-provoking.

Is Joe Biden forever destined to be at best mildly praised for everything simply because anything he does or says seems good compared with the literally insane ravings and actions of the Former Guy?

Yes. The ex-president who Biden denied a second term in a landslide victory was hands-down the most incompetent man to ever occupy the Oval Office. So it’s pretty easy to look good — smart, articulate, even-keeled, working in the best interest of the nation rather than your ego — compared to that.

But here at a year into the Biden presidency, when it comes to evaluating his work for the nation and the world, Biden clearly needs to start being appraised on his own, rather than in relation to the Former Train Wreck.

And he’s so far a mediocrity, a middling president, faced with challenges that only a giant among chief executives could stand up to.

He says and does the right things on the COVID-19 pandemic, but the virus is beyond such mild competence, smart enough to conspire to make any politician feel helpless at its wily ways.

He went ahead with the plans of his predecessor to get the hell out of Afghanistan pronto, to properly cut our losses, and when some Marines were tragically ambushed, it gave a forever talking point to the reactionary propagandists who would have completely ignored the deaths if their guy had been calling the shots that day.

He spent big by printing money and sending it to locked-down Americans, and when the arithmetical inevitability of inflation occurred, he properly has to take the heat for the highest price hikes in 40 years.

The border? Nothing has changed at the border. Undocumented people come across the border because of economics, not presidents.

The thing about me and Joe Biden is that I don’t have a dog in the fight — except in the sense of being a citizen, and wanting things to get better rather than worse in our world.

I started being massively under-impressed by Biden back when he was chairman of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary during the Clarence Thomas Supreme Court confirmation hearings, and the senator from Delaware along with every other chauvinist solon left the brilliant and believable Anita Hill twisting in the wind after her credible allegations of sexual harassment.

In eight years as vice president, Biden, a person of average intelligence, had the misfortune — fortune, if seen in a broader sense — to be serving alongside a genius. Tough to look good in such circumstances.

Now, with a divided Senate that blocks his big plans, with a cautious governing style that’s one or two steps behind the beat, with a gerrymandered House that is almost assured to flip to GOP control in the November elections, Biden’s presidency is clearly in trouble.

So here’s what he ought to do. And it’s not an original idea of mine, but I want to jump on its bandwagon, as all people of goodwill who aren’t merely partisan should. Like the rest of us, Biden isn’t getting any younger. And he’s already the oldest president ever.

Joe Biden, with Kamala Harris at his side, should immediately schedule a primetime White House address at which they both announce that they will only be serving one term.

But that makes them instant lame ducks, and consequently powerless, some would say.

I say the opposite. Right now, and likely in 2024, neither of them are re-electable. If they announce their intention to move on after this stint, they are freed from the constraint of governing with an eye on public opinion polls. They can instead just govern. It would be a blessing, not a burden. And, no, you wouldn’t want to make such a suggestion to a rash, impulsive president. But Biden takes everything right down the middle. He’s not going to start a war just because he doesn’t have to face the voters again. He could instead make the tough calls to help get inflation under control, to ensure that hard-fought voting rights aren’t again stolen from Americans, to go tough on China and Russia, to keep unvaccinated people off crowded airplanes, to free up the supply chain. By his opting out, good Democratic hopefuls can start their own campaigns now without worrying about upsetting the incumbent. (The vice president, already about as popular as a sneezing anti-vaxxer at the office party, is a relatively young person, and would gain time to remake herself and hope for a new political life in a decade or so.)

A year after taking office, Joe Biden doesn’t look like a Presidential Hall of Famer. Freed of the constraints re-election worries bring, he could yet surprise us, and do us a world of good.

Larry Wilson is on the Southern California News Group editorial board. [email protected].