by N. Peter Kramer
Biden will turn 80 years old on November 20. He is the oldest president in US history. The second- and third-oldest, Donald Trump and Ronald Reagan, became president at ages 70 and 69. The similarities end here. Trump, to put it gently, does not act his age. And Reagan disarmed his critics with a combination of personal charm and self-deprecatory humour. Biden by contrast is prickly and defensive.
Biden shuffles his feet; on several occasions he has tripped on the stairs to Airforce One; he felt of his bicycle and often at the end of a press availability he looks lost or can not find the way back. Some of Biden’s miscues are harmless. The world is not going to an end because the president wondered where Representative Walorski was in the audience (she died weeks before and the president had expressed ‘shock and sadness’) ; or honoured ‘President Harris’; or mistook Senator Mark Warner for the late Senator John Warner.
But other verbal eruptions are more consequential. When Biden says four times that US troops will defend Taiwan if China invades; or declares that ‘by God’ Putin ‘cannot remain in power’; or announces that the coronavirus pandemic is ‘over’; or that he wants to reign in the OPEC+. It all contributes to the speculation that the president is not fully in command.
Biden’s advanced age influences his schedule. He holds few press conferences and seldom gives interviews. He is spending more time away from the White House than his predecessors. Biden’s condition has the makings of an insoluble dilemma. In a June Harvard-Harris poll, 60% of registered voters said they had doubts about Biden’s fitness for office. 64% said he is showing that he is too old to be president. (60% said that Donald Trump also shouldn’t run).
Biden is unpopular. Public fear that an octogenarian Biden will be unable to respond in a major crisis will be a factor if the president decides to run for re-election. Asked whether he is ‘committed to running again’, Biden answered ‘It’s much too early to make that kind of decision’. A moment later he added, ‘Look my intention as I said to begin with is that I would run again. But it’s just an intention’.
The interviewer, Scott Pelley of 60 Minutes, asked Biden about his mental state. ‘Some people ask whether you are fit for the job. And when you hear that, I wonder what you think’. ‘Watch me’, Biden replied. And yes, people are watching. But they don’t like what they see…
