Washington: Joe Biden served in the Senate for 270 years. He used to be three years older than his sister Valerie, but is now 20 years her senior. And the fourth US president – whom Biden affectionately calls “Jimmy” Madison – is a good friend. All kidding aside, 80-year-old Biden will tell you, he’s at the end of his career, not the beginning. He’s been doing this for a long time. And he’s gotten “a hell of a lot of knowledge” over the years, making him eligible for a second term. As the oldest president in US history, Biden begins his re-election campaign, brooding about his advanced age, cracking self-deprecating jokes and spending his decades in public life I’m framing that as a plus, hoping to convince voters of his age. asset rather than vulnerability. In short, he’s trying to make it his own.
Martin Luther King, Jr. was co-pastor at the historic Atlanta church in January, Biden said, “I am humbled to have the opportunity to speak at the Ebenezer Sunday service here, being the first president of the United States of America.” “You’ve been around for 136 years. I know I look like that, but I didn’t.”
The octogenarian president’s comments about his age can be serious, woven into broader observations and often underpinning a broader point.
When Biden told the Irish parliament last month that he had never been more optimistic about the future, he specifically said, “And I am at the end of my career, not the beginning.”
“The only thing I bring to this career is my age — as you can see how old I am — but a little sense of humor,” Biden continued to the approving crowd. “I come to the job with more experience than any president in American history. That doesn’t make me better or worse, but it does give me some excuses.”
At other times, Biden — his mood buoyed by a crowd full of supporters, whether among Democratic lawmakers or in a lively Union Hall — often speaks off-the-cuff, eager to get the audience laughing with little pokes at himself. At the annual White House Correspondents’ Dinner on April 29, Biden made his age an early — and often — punchline.
Biden told a crowd of machine operators and engineers with the International Union of Operating Engineers in Acoke, Md., in April that “you guys were founded 122 years ago — when I didn’t get endorsed.”
He made a reference to “280 years of my career” at a Black History Month reception before being interrupted by laughter, and last month at an Air Force event, Biden said President Dwight Eisenhower had led the Air Force for more than six decades. Addressed the first class of the academy. at first but that “I wasn’t there… no matter what the press says.”
Intentionally or explicitly, it is nonetheless a strategy that explains how Ronald Reagan sidestepped questions about his age – then 73 – during the 1984 campaign. In a debate against 56-year-old Democrat Walter Mondale, Reagan pledged that he would neither make age an issue nor “take advantage of my opponent’s youth and inexperience, for political purposes.”
Biden is doing “exactly what he should be doing. He’s embracing it, he’s having fun with it, he’s doing exactly what Ronald Reagan did – injecting humor and self-deprecation into it, said Michael LaRosa, former press secretary for First Lady Jill Biden who also worked on the president’s 2020 campaign. “By saying the quiet part out loud, everyone is in on the joke. He knows his age, and he’s not pretending to be something he’s not. And that’s the most important quality in a candidate.”
The president may also find himself as a general election challenger, potentially neutralizing the issue of his age. The leading Republican nominee, Donald Trump, is 76, although some polls show voters show less concern about his age and sharpness than about Biden. Trump, for his part, insists the issue is “not age” — it’s Biden’s mental acuity.
Former Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina, struggling to gain traction in the still-formed GOP primary field, has consistently made Biden’s age a centerpiece of her campaign — even saying that she might not make it past the end of her second term. , when he will be 86 years old.
Biden’s personal physician said in February after the president’s most recent physical examination that Biden was “a healthy, vigorous 80-year-old male who is fit to successfully perform the duties of the presidency.”
Yet the public remains wary of Biden’s ability to do his job. A majority — 57% — of voters in last year’s midterm elections said they don’t think Biden “has the mental capacity to serve effectively as president,” according to AP VoteCast, a comprehensive poll of 2022 voters. Forty-one percent of voters said Biden did.
Nearly 9 in 10 Republicans and 2 in 10 Democrats said they think Biden does not have the mental capacity to serve as president. Among Democrats, however, voters younger than 45 were roughly twice as likely as older voters to say they thought Biden lacked mental capacity, 27% versus 13%.
An April poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research showed a marked gap between the percentage of Democrats who approve of Biden’s job performance — 78% — and those who want him to run again. Which was only 47%. Interviews with poll respondents suggested that the gap was due in large part to the age of the president.
Biden’s allies have long dismissed such concerns. To counter the age question, his re-election campaign is likely to emphasize his achievements to highlight his fitness to do the job, while underpinning the age-with-experience argument that Biden himself is making. I like it.
Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., said, “Part of the argument for President Biden’s reelection is that he has decades of experience.” “I think if he can balance this sometimes self-deprecating joke with showing the kind of agility, connectedness, casual approach to the issue that he did at the Correspondents’ Dinner, as he did at the State of the Union did, which they have.” Meeting with small groups of senators publicly and privately, I think that’s an asset.”
In a new MSNBC interview last week, Biden again dismissed concerns about his age, saying, “I’ve got a lot of wisdom and know more than most people.”
Biden’s advisers also noted that his age emerged as an issue in the 2020 campaign and did not derail his path to the White House. Some of his nominal challengers in that year’s Democratic presidential primary, such as former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julian Castro and former Ohio Representative Tim Ryan, made indirect references to Biden’s age and mental acuity, but among other candidates There was no attraction for this. , (One of them, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., is older than Biden.)
Biden has acknowledged in the past that his age is a legitimate issue for voters, and said shortly after announcing his re-election that he was taking a “hard look” at it before formalizing his decision to run for a second term. .
He said at a press conference with South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol last month, “If I had to guess how old I am, I can’t even tell the number. It’s not – it doesn’t register with me.” “But the only thing I can say is that’s one of the things people are going to find out – they’re going to watch a race, and they’re going to judge whether I have it or not.”