Mr. Biden’s public appearances have fueled that perception. His speeches can be flat and lackluster. Sometimes he loses his train of thought, has trouble calling names, or appears momentarily confused. More than once, he has promoted Vice President Kamala Harris, calling her “President Harris.” Mr. Biden, who overcame a childhood stutter, stumbles over words like “kleptocracy.” He has said Iranian when he meant Ukrainian and several times called Sen. Mark Warner, D-Virginia, “John,” mistaking him for the late Republican senator from Virginia. Republicans and conservative media gleefully highlight such moments, posting viral videos, sometimes exaggerated or distorted to make Mr. Biden look even worse. But the White House has been forced to walk back some of his comments, such as when he promised a military response if China attacked Taiwan or said President Vladimir Putin “cannot stay in power” in Russia. Mr. Biden has been famously gaffe-prone even as a younger man, and his aides point to his marathon meetings with families of mass shooting victims or working on the ropes during a trip to Cleveland last week as signs of resilience. Mike Donilon, a senior adviser who began working for Biden about 40 years ago, said he has seen no change. “On the way back from long trips, when the staff are gone, they’ll want to spend four hours planning how we’re going to achieve domestic policy, when all the much younger staff want to do is sleep,” he said. Mr. Biden is not the first president to deal with age issues. The issue was raised repeatedly under President Donald J. Trump, who is four years younger. Mr. Trump’s reduced vocabulary, tendency to meander, sometimes incoherent remarks, light office hours and struggles to process information led critics to conclude he was in decline.
title: “At 79 Biden Is Testing The Limits Of Age And The Presidency " ShowToc: true date: “2022-11-23” author: “Grant Taylor”
The trip was initially linked to another trip last month to Europe, which would have resulted in a arduous 10-day trip abroad until it became clear to Mr. Biden’s team that such an extended trip could unnecessarily tax a 79-year-old president. , or “crazy,” as one official put it. Aides also cited political and diplomatic reasons for rescheduling the extra stops as a separate trip weeks later. But the reality is that managing the program of the oldest president in American history presents unique challenges. And as Mr. Biden insists he plans to run for a second term, his age has become an increasingly uncomfortable issue for him, his team and his party. Just a year and a half into his first term, Mr. Biden is already more than a year older than Ronald Reagan at the end of two terms. If he launches another campaign in 2024, Mr. Biden would ask the country to elect a leader who would be 86 at the end of his term, testing the outer limits of age and the presidency. Polls show many Americans view Mr. Biden as too old, and some Democratic strategists do not believe he should run again. It is, unsurprisingly, a sensitive issue in the West Wing. In interviews, some chastised by the White House and others not, more than a dozen current and former senior officials and advisers uniformly said Mr. Biden remained intellectually engaged, asking smart questions in meetings, grilling aides on points of disagreement, calling them late. in the evening, picking at that weak point on page 14 of a memo and rewriting speeches like his statement on abortion on Friday until the last minute. But they acknowledged that Mr. Biden looks older than he did a few years ago, a political liability that cannot be solved by traditional White House tricks such as staff reshuffles or new communications plans. His energy level, while impressive for a man of his age, isn’t what it used to be, and some aides keep a quiet eye on him. He often shuffles when he walks and aides worry he will trip over a wire. He stumbles over words during public events and they hold their breath to see if he will make it to the end without a gaffe. Although White House officials insist they are not making special arrangements like the Reagan team did, they are privately trying to preserve as much of Mr. Biden’s weekends in Delaware as possible. He is generally chairman five or five and a half days a week, although he is called at any time, regardless of the day, as needed. He stays out of public view at night and has taken part in fewer than half as many press conferences or interviews than his recent predecessors. When Mr. Biden fell while riding a bicycle last month, White House officials wistfully noted that it was among the top stories of the week — never mind that the president works out five mornings a week, often with a trainer, or that many men U his age he doesn’t ride a bike anymore. Mr. Biden himself has said that it is reasonable to ask questions about his physical condition, even as he assures Americans that he is in good shape. Even for some fans, though, the question is whether that will last another six years.
The Biden Presidency
With the midterm elections looming, here’s President Biden.
“I feel it’s inappropriate to seek this office after you’re 80 or in your 80s,” said David Gergen, a top adviser to four presidents. “I’ve just turned 80 and I’ve found over the last two or three years that I think it wouldn’t be wise to try to run an organisation. You’re not as sharp as you once were.” Everyone ages differently, of course, and some experts place Mr. Biden in a category of “super seniors” who remain unusually fit as they age. “Right now, there’s no indication that Biden’s age should matter one ounce,” said S. Jay Olshansky, a longevity expert at the University of Illinois at Chicago who has studied the ages of the 2020 candidates. people don’t like policies, they don’t like what he says, that’s okay, they can vote for someone else. But it’s not about how old they are.” But Professor Olshansky said it was legitimate to wonder whether that would remain the case at 86. “That’s the right question to ask,” he said. “You can’t fight aging. Things go wrong as we get older and the risks increase as we get older.” The White House rejected the idea that Mr. Biden was anything other than a seven-day leader. “President Biden works every day, and because CEOs can carry out their duties from anywhere in the world, it has long been common for them to spend weekends away from the White House,” Deputy Press Secretary Andrew Bates said after the article. published online. The president’s medical report in November showed that he had atrial fibrillation but that it was stable and asymptomatic. “Mr. Biden’s walking gait is noticeably stiffer and less fluid than a year ago,” the report said, and the GERD causes him to cough and clear his throat, symptoms that “certainly appear to are more frequent and more intense. .” But overall, Dr. Kevin C. O’Connor, the president’s physician, called him “a healthy, vigorous 78-year-old man who is capable of successfully carrying out the duties of the presidency.” But questions about Mr. Biden’s fitness have hurt his public standing. In a June survey by the Harvard Center for American Policy Studies and the Harris Poll, 64 percent of voters thought he looked too old to be president, including 60 percent of respondents 65 and older. Mr. Biden’s public appearances have fueled that perception. His speeches can be flat and lackluster. Sometimes he loses his train of thought, has trouble calling names, or appears momentarily confused. More than once, he has promoted Vice President Kamala Harris, calling her “President Harris.” Mr. Biden, who overcame a childhood stutter, stumbles over words like “kleptocracy.” He has said Iranian when he meant Ukrainian and several times called Sen. Mark Warner, D-Virginia, “John,” mistaking him for the late Republican senator from Virginia. Republicans and conservative media gleefully highlight such moments, posting viral videos, sometimes exaggerated or distorted to make Mr. Biden look even worse. But the White House has been forced to walk back some of his comments, such as when he promised a military response if China attacked Taiwan or said President Vladimir Putin “cannot stay in power” in Russia. Mr. Biden has been famously gaffe-prone even as a younger man, and his aides point to his marathon meetings with families of mass shooting victims or working on the ropes during a trip to Cleveland last week as signs of resilience. Mike Donilon, a senior adviser who began working for Biden about 40 years ago, said he has seen no change. “On the way back from long trips, when the staff are gone, they’ll want to spend four hours planning how we’re going to achieve domestic policy, when all the much younger staff want to do is sleep,” he said. Mr. Biden is not the first president to deal with age issues. The issue was raised repeatedly under President Donald J. Trump, who is four years younger. Mr. Trump’s reduced vocabulary, tendency to meander, sometimes incoherent remarks, light office hours and struggles to process information led critics to conclude he was in decline. Until now, the oldest president was Reagan. When a poor debate performance in 1984 briefly threatened his re-election, he rallied in his next meeting by joking that he would not take advantage of “my opponent’s youth and inexperience.” “Reagan understood this issue, both intuitively and thoughtfully,” biographer Lou Cannon said. “And he said to me, ‘Age will be a problem if I act old and it won’t be if I don’t.’ By Reagan’s final years, a new team of aides secretly evaluated whether he should be removed from office under the 25th Amendment’s disability clause, but ultimately concluded that he was still competent. (Five years after leaving the White House, he was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease.) However, his aides tried to curtail his schedule, sharply watched by first lady Nancy Reagan. “That was one of the first lessons we had, not to overschedule,” recalls Tom Grisco, one of those assistants. Nor should they send overly informative documents at night. “After two weeks,” he said, “a message came back from Mrs. Reagan asking us not to send so many at night because she would read them all,” staying up late. Mr. Biden’s advisers say he resists such management and is pushing in the other direction. “He’s constantly adding to his schedule, whether it’s phone calls from new CEOs or nightly meetings with members,” said Jennifer O’Malley Dillon, the deputy chief of staff who oversees his calendar. But aides are cautious about his exposure to the coronavirus. Assistants are tested once a week and wear colored wristbands on the day of their test. if they plan to attend a meeting with the president on another day, then they should try and wear N95 masks that morning as well. The White House seems equally determined to shield Mr. Biden from unscripted interactions with the media. He has held just 16 press conferences since taking office, less than half as many as Trump, Barack Obama and George W. Bush have so far, and less than a third as many as Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush, according to Martha. Joynt Kumar, a longtime scholar of presidential media strategy. Likewise, Mr. Biden has given just 38 interviews, far fewer than Mr. Trump (116), Obama (198), Bush Jr. (71), Clinton (75) and…
