Biden – 80: there have never been such elderly presidents in US history

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Once upon a time, talk about Soviet gerontocracy and “Kremlin elders” was popular. But Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev died at the age of 76. Yuri Andropov, who replaced him, died before he even reached his 70th birthday. And Konstantin Ustinovich Chernenko lived for 73 years.

The current US President Joe Biden, we repeat, is already 80 years old. If he is going to participate in the next elections and wins, he will be 82 years old. So what kind of “gerontocracy” is there in the USSR in comparison with this?

“His age has always been a sensitive issue among his closest allies, and planning is currently underway on how best to proceed in this case,” Politico writes about Biden, according to which the White House decided not to pedal the theme of the anniversary of the head of the United States. As Politico points out, Joe Biden rarely does anything special on his birthday. Usually celebrates his own in the family circle.

Biden is not the first president for whom age has become a matter of policy, the publication notes further. As you know, one of his predecessors, Dwight Eisenhower, said that “no one should ever be over 70 years old in this position, and I know it.”

Eisenhower left office in 1961, shortly after he reached the age of seventy. But while attitudes on aging have changed over the decades, White House aides know that Biden’s birthday will be an inherently political issue — a reminder that voters may face choices about his suitability for office.

“We didn’t have an 80-year-old president before, but if there’s any lesson to be learned from modern history, it’s that if the president looks energetic and does his job well, age doesn’t matter to voters,” says the presidential historian. Michael Beshloss. “When a president plans to run for re-election at an age voters have not yet seen, history shows that the onus is on the candidate to show that age will not be an issue.”

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Biden has aged noticeably since his time as vice president during the Obama presidency, has lost weight, he has less hair. His stride also shortened and slowed down, not helped by a broken leg he sustained while playing with one of his dogs. And, of course, you can’t ignore Biden’s oddities, such as when he spoke at a conference on security issues in connection with the famine and addressed an Indiana congresswoman who died in a car accident a few months ago. “Jackie, are you there? Where is Jackie?” Biden cried, as if he had forgotten or was unaware of the death of Rep. Jackie Valorsky. Well, how can one not recall the anecdote about Brezhnev with the words: “Yesterday at the funeral of Comrade Suslov, by the way, where is he?…”

Almost immediately, video clips began to circulate through right-wing media channels in which Biden asks: “Where is Jackie?” Conservative commentators have suggested using the 25th Amendment to the US Constitution to remove Biden from the presidency as incapable of performing the duties of head of state.

At the same time, Biden is taking steps to keep fit by exercising daily and maintaining a healthy weight. His schedule softens noticeably after extended trips abroad, and he spends most of his weekends at his family’s home in Delaware, although aides say this is not due to age: they say other presidents also had easier schedules after trips abroad, in order to catch up on domestic affairs. Meanwhile, we recall that exactly on the eve of his 80th birthday, Biden went on a week-long trip to Egypt, Cambodia and Indonesia.

Republicans often circulate videos of Biden looking confused or stumbling, while White House officials try to dismiss the notion that such gaffes are a sign of age or lack of mental acuity and chalk it up to extreme work pressure. People close to Biden admit that the president gets tired faster, and when he gets tired, he becomes more prone to such gaffes.

A Washington Post-ABC News poll from back in February of this year found that 54 percent of Americans believe Biden is not mentally sharp enough to effectively serve as president, up from 43 percent in May 2020.

“Sometimes he’s there, sometimes he’s not,” says Howard Walker, a 54-year-old New York Democrat who voted for Biden in 2020. “Sometimes he tells long grandmother stories that lead nowhere, like old people do. And that’s okay, but that’s not what we want from a president.”

To Biden’s credit, he is self-deprecating about his strange actions and has long called himself a “blunder machine.” The President of the United States likes to joke about his own age. Although it is quite possible that this is not a willingness to laugh at oneself, but political technology. In any case, according to The Washington Post, some White House aides are urging Biden to address the problem of age directly, using humor or emphasizing the experience that comes with age. In this regard, the example of 73-year-old Ronald Reagan is cited, who famously joked during a 1984 debate against 56-year-old Democrat Walter Mondale that he would not “exploit my opponent’s youth and inexperience for political purposes.”

Biden, apparently, decided to keep up with the president, whom he stripped of the status of the oldest in the history of America – and have fun over his age.

“The very first president to attend the White House Correspondents Dinner was Calvin Coolidge in 1924. I just got elected to the United States Senate,” Biden joked a few months ago. “I remember telling him, ‘Cal, just be yourself. Get up there and speak from the heart. You’ll be great, baby.”

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Not too long ago, the American president joked that it was hard to admit that he was about to turn eighty, but said that he was physically and mentally capable of serving a potential second term in the White House.

Better-than-expected Democratic results in the US midterms have eased Biden’s path to re-election, although aides to the head of state say a decision has yet to be made.

Encircled by Biden, Politico writes, they are preparing steps to prepare for a new campaign. It is expected that the start of the election race of the current head of the White House is likely to occur in the first few months of 2023. Those closest to the president say family discussions about running with First Lady Jill Biden could begin around the Christmas holidays, with a final decision likely to be made early in the new year.

Shortly before his 79th birthday last year, Biden underwent a series of blood tests, physical, gastrointestinal, dental, visual and neurological examinations. Dr. Kevin O’Connor, the president’s attending physician, wrote in a six-page memo released by the White House after this “inspection” that Biden was “healthy, energetic” and “able to successfully carry out the duties of the president.” The medic said he was examining Biden for an increase in throat-clearing during public speaking and stiffness in walking. O’Connor said Biden’s cough was due to gastrointestinal reflux, and the stiffness of his gait was the result of a new diagnosis of mild peripheral neuropathy, spinal arthritis, and compensation for a broken foot shortly before he took office.

“President Biden remains a healthy, energetic 78-year-old man, capable of successfully fulfilling the duties of the president, including as chief executive, head of state and commander in chief,” Dr. O’Connor stated in November 2021.

Before Biden, the oldest person to be elected president of the United States was Ronald Reagan at the age of 69. And some Democrats are secretly wondering if Biden is too old to run again, but many close to the president suspect he will, especially after Donald Trump announced his presidential ambitions.

In an interview with MSNBC, Biden, commenting on his age, said that people should judge for themselves whether he is up to the task of being president, as polls show that voters would rather not see a rematch of Republican Donald Trump, whom Biden defeated in 2020.

At the same time, Biden’s entourage in the White House indicates that Trump himself is not a boy. trains less and eats worse than Biden, and in addition is prone to public outbursts of anger and inconsistency. Especially since medical advances in recent years have greatly reduced the vulnerability of older people – and an 80-year-old today is not the same as an 80-year-old in the 1950s or 1960s.

The most important thing, according to the allies of the incumbent president, is that Trump poses a huge threat to democracy and that Biden has the best chance of defeating him – which makes the current head of the American state an indispensable candidate at any age.

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And Trump has already tried to make Biden’s age an issue in their 2020 election showdown – calling his opponent “Sleepy Joe.” Republican attacks on the elderly politician continue to this day. “If you blew on him, he would fall,” the ex-president said about his enemy in an interview with the Salem News Channel.

“I think we are all concerned about the mental health of President Biden,” Senator Roger Marshall (R-Kansas) said recently.

Moreover, it is Biden’s age that makes many Democrats doubt his prospects in the 2024 elections. Several Democratic lawmakers, including Representatives Elissa Slotkin (D-Michigan), Tim Ryan (D-Ohio), Dean Phillips (D-Minnesota), and Angie Craig (D-Minnesota), have called for a fresher, younger leader to head the list for presidential elections, providing “new blood” and “change of generations”.

After all, as The Washington Post recalls, if Biden runs for a second term and wins the election, he will be 82 years old at the time of his inauguration in 2025 and 86 years old at the end of his second term.

But Biden advisers say American voters have become more comfortable with older people in leadership positions, whether in politics or business. So, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi turned 82 this year. Senate Democratic Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) is 71 years old. And Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) is 89 years old. Yes, and Trump turned 76 years old – and he will be 78 years old at the time of the inauguration in 2025 (if, of course, he wins) and 82 years old when he completes his second term.

But here’s the interesting part: A recent Associated Press-NORC Public Affairs Research Center poll shows that only about 3 in 10 Americans polled want either Biden or Trump to run for president in two years. At the same time, only half of the Democrats polled want Biden to run for a second term, while 6 out of 10 Republicans hope that Trump will run again for the presidency of the United States.