Aging in place: Biden’s senior status hovers over president’s final campaign
Max Thornberry
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President Joe Biden has already made history as the oldest commander in chief the United States has ever had.
If Biden, 80, wages a successful bid to return to the White House in 2024, he will sit just outside the top 10 list of oldest serving leaders in the world. When Biden started his career in Washington in 1973 as a Democratic senator from Delaware, more than 130 current House members and 10 senators had not been born yet.
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The age issue has the potential to pull both ways in 2024, particularly if the general election is a rematch between Biden and former President Donald Trump. Biden and his White House operation and campaign team are painting the president’s senior status as a reflection of his hard-won real-world experience from 36 years in the Senate, eight as vice president, and now going on four in the White House. Republican opponents, and, increasingly, some in his own party, view his age as a political liability.
Republicans have their own problem with a potentially senior standard-bearer in Trump. He’s the front-runner to claim the GOP nomination in 2024, even facing several declared Republican rivals and several more who could still jump into the race. Trump would be 78 on inauguration day if he can be the first president since Grover Cleveland in 1892 to win nonconsecutive terms as president.
But Biden is the incumbent president and is likely to bear the brunt of age-related questions. It’s an issue Republicans aren’t shying away from.
Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley recently suggested Biden is unlikely to survive a second term, which he would be 86 at the end of. The warning by Haley, South Carolina governor from 2011-17 and then the Trump administration ambassador to the United Nations for nearly two years, came with an explicit attack on Biden’s running mate and frequent GOP punching bag, Vice President Kamala Harris.
“We can all be very clear and say with a matter of fact that if you vote for Joe Biden, you really are counting on a President Harris,” Haley said. “Because the idea that he would make it until 86 years old is not something that I think is likely.”
Haley has been the highest-profile Republican to lob such a bomb at the president, but she wasn’t the first.
Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-TX), who for a time was then-President Trump’s White House physician, questioned whether Biden will even live to see the 2024 general election contest.
“I’m sounding the alarm bells every single day right now,” Jackson said. “This man is going to get us into a war with China, Russia, Iran, or North Korea. He’s incompetent. And he cannot — he probably will not make it the remainder of the two years that he has in this term.”
After two years of watching the president in action, including several verbal and physical miscues, opponents say Biden is not up to the job of running the country. And GOP officials are saying out loud what voters have been telling pollsters.
An April NBC poll showed 70% of people think Biden is too old to run again. The poll was taken before Biden announced his reelection campaign, but his age was a significant factor in responses, with 48% of respondents saying they didn’t want him to run pointing to Biden’s age as a “major reason” for their decision. On the whole, 69% of people said Biden’s age was a reason to consider casting a vote for the Republican candidate in 2024.
With Biden’s reelection campaign off the ground, White House staffers are starting to open up about concerns they have about their boss.
White House officials told Axios their praise for Biden’s activity and mental sharpness was often accompanied with a caveat: “for his age.”
The press corps has been less than impressed with Biden’s scant meetings with them. The White House has rarely let the president interact with reporters outside of tightly controlled settings, and he has forgone interviews with major outlets that have been customary for U.S. leaders for decades.
Limiting interactions with the press and public could be an effective strategy to preempt damage control efforts, but it has also strangled Biden’s ability to connect with voters.
Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) has suggested Biden needs more exposure to voters and said the White House “overprotecting” the president is doing him more harm than good.
“I think he’s actually really good. I think his staff overprotects him,” Khanna said on Fox last week. “I think, put him out there in a press conference. Who cares if someone makes a gaffe? Every person makes a gaffe in conversations. Let’s see the authentic President Biden.”
After running a “basement campaign” in 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, which forced people to stay in their homes and limited traditional politicking of the variety Biden grew up with, the 2024 contest will be a return to normal. That dynamic could pose problems if Biden appears to be a low-energy candidate when compared to the active Trump team.
Or he could lean into the dichotomy, playing up his role as the Trump alternative.
Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE), a Biden campaign co-chairman, said as much when he invoked the president’s favorite phrase, “Don’t compare me to the almighty; compare me to the alternative,” in an interview on ABC.
“I’d say, ‘Compare him to the alternative,'” Coons said, reminding voters the contest is likely to be a repeat of 2020. “Recognize the value of experience and seasoning; recognize that his values align better with where we want America to go.”
If Biden gets his wish and matches up against Trump for a second campaign, the old-age question might be a problem lost to the history books as both candidates fight to dispel doubts about whether the leader of the free world should be someone more familiar with the new world.
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Former Texas GOP Rep. Will Hurd said age will be a factor, one way or another, but if Trump is the GOP nominee, it’s one both parties will have to account for.
“This is a potential rematch in 2024 that nobody wants to see,” Hurd said. “Unfortunately, whether we like it or not, age is going to be a factor in this campaign because, guess what? Donald Trump’s no spring chicken either. So this is something that both candidates are going to have to deal with in the primaries and President Biden in the general election.”