Looks like a caricature: Biden’s advanced age has begun to frighten his allies

By the time Democrats took their seats and the US president returned to the stage minutes later, murmurs had rippled through the room, according to several people who later spoke to CNN.

How damaging will all the new questions about the age and mental acuity of the American president be? Does anyone have a plan to get more Americans to see the behind-the-scenes acuity and clarity of thinking that they know is far removed from the public image? And why did the “leader of the free world” sit in front of one of the friendliest audiences he could find, long after the press had been ushered out, answering scripted questions from prepared cards – even if he ended up quickly segueing from them to his own riffs ?

These are the questions asked by CNN, a channel that is, in principle, favorably disposed towards the Democrats, and, consequently, towards Joe Biden.

Whether it was brutal honesty or—as Biden’s aides charge—the partisan work of a Donald Trump appointee to damage a Democratic president he couldn’t find grounds to prosecute, the special counsel’s report went straight to what every adviser knew Biden will be the president’s full-time responsibility since he began talking about running for reelection: At 81, he’s clearly aged, and many don’t think he’s up to the job, CNN admits.

One Democratic House member reacted when he was told about questions about age and memory raised in the report with a morbid laugh and a sullen shake of his head. Another began to anxiously ask how others were reacting, clearly feeling out of place. Even those in the Democratic Party who believe ageism, double standards about Trump and overblown fears about Biden are at play say they are growing concerned that questions about age that crop up in many Democratic focus groups The parties have been going on for over two years now and are getting louder.

And they are loud enough to make leading Democrats worry that undecided voters might believe that four more years of the far-right, anti-democratic agenda Trump is promising will be better than four more years of Biden, if he appears to be on the decline.

Inside the White House and among Biden’s re-election campaign, tensions remain constant. Senior aides have outlined a strategy to ensure the president doesn’t have to play the Washington news game of constant appearances that are fraught with embarrassing missteps, while others complain that it unfortunately reinforces the image created by his political opponents that he can barely cope. their responsibilities.

Biden is constantly caught speaking “pompously” and looking “like a caricature,” complained one sympathetic former White House West Wing aide, who asked not to be named.

“Some of the people around him create this weird bubble because they’re trying to protect him, but they make him so worried that he makes mistakes,” the former aide said.

Representative of the Democratic Party. Annie Kuster, who was initially skeptical about Biden running for re-election instead of giving way to a younger candidate but has since come to terms, said she and three other members of the New Hampshire congressional delegation left the Oval Office meeting on last week, chatting with each other about Biden’s impressive command of the issues.

Dozens of officials, aides and others who have spent time alone with Biden over the past three years have told CNN they believe he is fully aware of events. And White House aides were fond of pointing out, for example, that former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who often publicly questioned Biden’s mental health, also told reporters after the meetings that the president was aware of everything they discussed.

Internal debates go beyond giving speeches or agreeing to interviews. Current and former aides tell CNN that decisions about opening White House events to the press, how long they are scheduled and other logistics are apparently clouded by considerations about the president’s age and how it will be received.

That said, there is always the chance that Biden will make a gaffe, as he did last weekend when he confused French President Emmanuel Macron with long-dead French President Francois Mitterrand. Or when he returned to the microphone Thursday night after making sharp remarks about the special adviser’s report, only to have his carefully measured comments about the Israel-Hamas war negotiations distracted by his calling Abdel Fattah el-Sisi the president of Mexico, not Egypt.

To this, however, Maryland representative Jamie Raskin said that Trump’s mistakes are much worse, from the statement that Biden would start “World War II” if he is elected to a second term, and ending with the appearance in a videotaped testimony in which he mixed up a photograph E. Jean Carroll with a photograph of his second wife.

Democratic operatives and consultants pounced with advice: Spend a lot more time on his makeup and lighting, they tell Biden aides, or finally accept that the arthritis explanation doesn’t work and start inviting him to more events where he starts sitting down instead of taking pictures while shuffling towards the podium.

Other Democrats are more direct, reacting with anger when it comes to the fact that the president is still riding a bike after his fall on camera in 2022 (after which he immediately stood up) or walking shirtless on the beach last summer. In this existential moment for American democracy, they say, the wavering president too often finds himself too close to a costly embarrassment.

A campaign aide told CNN that many in the Wilmington, Delaware, campaign believe Republican attacks on the president and his age are nothing new compared to those that have been leveled at him since he began running for office. the presidency in 2019.

Despite all the attention on Biden’s gaffes during the last campaign, “voters didn’t care,” said Kate Boerner, deputy communications director for that campaign and later the White House who is now an outside adviser to the re-election effort.

White House Deputy Press Secretary Andrew Bates added that any concerns about Biden’s age are being offset by what aides see as another week of more pressing news, this time in a confrontation with Republicans who have abandoned their own demands for a bipartisan border bill. and immigration.

“I have good intentions and I’m an old man and I know what the hell I’m doing. I’m the president. “I got this country back on its feet,” Biden himself boasts.

Behind the scenes, before heading into a meeting with House Democrats, Biden was more angry than sarcastic about the accusations. The suggestion that he doesn’t know what year his son Beau Biden died clearly hurt the president deeply. “How the hell could I forget this?” Biden said, according to one of the people who heard him.