People in their 80s lead countries, create majestic art and perform feats of endurance. Van entered the record books for scaling Mount Everest. It is soon time for Joe Biden, who turns 80 on Sunday, to decide whether he has one more mountain to climb — a second term as president.
Questions are being raised within his own party as well as the country more widely about whether he has what it takes to go on to summit again.
The oldest president in US history, Mr. Biden hit his milestone birthday at a personal crossroads as he and his family face a decision in the coming months about whether he should seek re-election.
He will be 86 at the end of a possible second term.
Mr Biden’s aides and allies all say he intends to run – and his team has begun quiet preparations for a campaign – but it has often been the president himself who has voiced the most ambivalence.
“I intend to run again,” he told a news conference this month. But I respect fate a lot. We are going to have a discussion about it,” he said.
Aides expect those conversations to be taken up in earnest over Thanksgiving and Christmas, with a decision not expected until well after the new year.
File photo of newly elected Democratic Senator Joe Biden from Delaware, December 13, 1972 | Photo Credit: AP
Mr Biden plans to celebrate his birthday on Sunday at a family brunch at the White House.
To watch Mr. Biden at work is to see the store of knowledge a leader has built up over more than half a century in public office, because of his deep personal ties at home and abroad, his mastery of policy and how Washington works. is or is familiar with. No.
In short, the wisdom of the elders.
“There’s something to be said for experience,” said Matt Delmont, a historian at Dartmouth College.
But watching Mr. Biden also means that he is now often seen walking intermittently, unlike his walk on stage on the night of the 2020 election.
It is tantamount to seeing him take a pass on formal dinners with other world leaders without any real explanation, as was the case on his trip abroad last week, when he twice said he was going to Colombia when he meant Cambodia.
Some supporters laugh when he speaks in the hope that he will be corrected by his remarks.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s decision to step back from leadership at the age of 82 and let a new generation take the lead could spill over into the thinking of Mr. Biden and his party as Democrats decide whether to go with a proven winner. want or want to move forward. Energy of youth.
Among the questions raised by Pelosi’s move, said Kathleen Hall Jamieson, an authority on political communication at the University of Pennsylvania: “Even if someone is highly capable and successful, is there a point at which others should lead must step aside to give an opportunity to do so.” Like others have stepped aside to make it possible for you to do the same?
“Pelosi’s decision makes such questions more prominent in the context of Mr. Biden’s 2020 statement that he was a bridge to a new generation of leaders.”
Mr. Biden’s verbal ups and downs during his five-decade political career have been the stuff of legend, so tracing the effect of age on his acuity is a guessing game for “armchair gerontologists,” as Dr. S.J. Jay Olshansky, an aging specialist, puts it.
In the distorting mirrors of social media commentary, each slip is magnified into perceived evidence of senility.
A moment of silent reflection at a meeting by Mr. Biden is prompted by the nodding of the president.
It all went into Donald Trump’s quiver of lies when he announced on Tuesday that he would seek the presidency again.
Some allies see Mr. Biden’s blunders as a sign of his growing vulnerability in the eyes of voters as he gets older.
In an AP VoteCast poll of voters this month, fully 58% of voters said he did not have the mental capacity to serve effectively as president.
That was a serious picture of his standing right now, not just looking ahead to another possible term. Only 34% said he is a strong leader.
Those findings come with Mr. Trump in league with particularly low approval ratings at this point in his presidency.
Two months before the 2020 election, Olshansky at the University of Illinois, Chicago published a paper predicting that both Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump are bound to maintain their good health beyond the end of this presidency .
Based on the scientific team’s evaluation of available medical records, family history and other information, the paper further concluded that both men are probably “super-agers”, a subgroup of people who maintain their mental and physical functioning. and live longer. average person their age.
Nothing has changed Olshansky’s mind about either of them.
“While President Biden may be 80 chronologically, biologically he probably isn’t,” he said. “And biological age is much more important than chronological age.” He calls Biden “the classic example of everything about aging … and so his age, I think, should be almost entirely irrelevant.”
Mr. Biden is already in a club of high achievers for people his age. Unlike 92% of people age 75 and older in America, she still has a job, not to mention a mighty demanding one.
And he’s been on a roll. November’s elections produced the best result for a Democratic presidential party in the midterms in decades – despite the poison pill of high inflation – as Democrats retained control of the Senate, lost the House in defiance of expectations of a defeat, and won several competitive governors’ races in key states.
The president also sealed a series of consequential legislative victories in recent months on climate, infrastructure, health care expansion, military aid to Ukraine and more.
Mr. Biden says he begins most days with an 8 a.m. workout, when he’s usually joined by his personal trainer and physical therapist, Drew Contreras, if he’s not riding his Peloton bike.
“If I let it go for a week, I’ll figure it out,” he recently told the “Smartless” podcast. “I could go on for a week and nothing would change.”
White House aides say Mr. Biden reads his briefing book at night, holds intense evening meetings with advisers and never bows to their scheduling requests that can make him out late, though rarely. Sometimes get up early.
Yet his aides are highly protective of the president, especially with his public program that pales in comparison to that of Barack Obama and George W. Bush, both much younger in office. They have shielded him from formal interviews and, until recently, press conferences.
To doubters he says: “Look at me.”
Mr. Biden has been diagnosed with several common age-related health conditions, none of which have caused serious problems.
In a summary of Mr. Biden’s health following his first physical as president in November 2021, Dr. Kevin O’Connor said Mr. Biden’s gait had become somewhat stiff, something doctors see in older patients Because it may indicate a risk of downside.
But after testing, the doctor concluded it was mostly caused by “wear and tear” arthritis of the spine as well as compensation for a broken leg a year earlier and the development of “mild peripheral neuropathy,” or microscopic damage to some sensory nerves. Is. in feet.
Experts say age is not destiny; What matters is good health, fitness and functioning.
Japanese climber Yuichiro Miura had the guts to reach the top of Mount Everest in 2013 at the age of 80, setting a record that an 85-year-old Nepalese man died trying to break in 2017.
Growing old is hard—at any speed, it comes.