Biden testing limits of age and presidency
WASHINGTON — When President Joe Biden leaves Tuesday night for a four-day swing through the Middle East, he will presumably be more rested than he would have been had he followed the original plan.
The trip was initially tacked onto another journey last month to Europe, which would have made for an arduous 10-day overseas trek until it finally became clear to Biden’s team that such extended travel might be unnecessarily taxing for a 79-year-old president, or “crazy,” as one official put it.
Aides also cited political and diplomatic reasons to reorganize the extra stops as a separate trip weeks later. But the reality is that managing the schedule of the oldest president in American history presents challenges beyond what other administrations have faced. And as Biden insists he plans to run for a second term, his age has increasingly become an uncomfortable issue for him, his team and his party.
Just a year and a half into his first term, Biden is already more than a year older than Ronald Reagan was at the end of two terms. If he mounts another campaign in 2024, Biden would be asking the country to elect a leader who would be 86 at the end of his tenure, testing the outer boundaries of age and the presidency. Polls show many Americans are convinced that Biden is too old, and some Democratic strategists do not think he should run again.
It is, unsurprisingly, a sensitive topic in the West Wing. In interviews, some sanctioned by the White House and some not, a dozen current and former senior administration officials uniformly reported that Biden remains intellectually engaged, asking smart questions at meetings, grilling aides on points of dispute, calling them late at night, picking out that weak point on Page 14 of a memo and rewriting speeches like his abortion statement Friday right up until the last minute.
But they acknowledged that his energy level, while impressive for a man of his age, is not what it once was, and at least some aides quietly watch out for him. He often shuffles when he walks, and aides worry he will trip on a wire. He stumbles over words during public events, and they hold their breath to see if he makes it to the end without a gaffe.
Positive report
Biden has said questions about his fitness are reasonable to ask even as he reassures Americans that he is in good shape and up to the challenges of his office. Even for some of his admirers, though, the question is whether that will last six or seven more years.
“Frankly, I think it’s a real risk,” David Gergen, a top adviser to four presidents, told CNN anchor John Berman in a recent television appearance. “I just turned 80 and I can just tell you, John, you lose a step. Your judgment is not quite as clear as it was. There are a variety of other things you can’t do much about.”
The president’s medical report in November indicated that he had atrial fibrillation but that it was stable. Biden’s “ambulatory gait is perceptibly stiffer and less fluid than it was a year or so ago,” the report said, and gastroesophageal reflux causes him to cough and clear his throat, symptoms that “certainly seem to be more frequent and more pronounced.”
But overall, Dr. Kevin C. O’Connor, the president’s physician, pronounced him “a healthy, vigorous 78-year-old male, who is fit to successfully execute the duties of the presidency.”
Questions about his fitness have nonetheless taken a toll on his public standing. In a June survey by Harvard’s Center for American Political Studies and the Harris Poll, 64 percent of voters believed Biden was showing that he is too old to be president, including 60 percent of respondents who were 65 or older.
Biden’s public appearances have fueled that perception. His speeches can be flat and listless. He sometimes loses his train of thought, has trouble summoning names or appears momentarily confused. More than once, he has promoted Vice President Kamala Harris, calling her “President Harris.” Biden, who overcame a childhood stutter, stumbles over words like “kleptocracy,” finally retreating to “bad guys” instead. He has said Iranians when he meant Ukrainians and several times called Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., “John,” confusing him with the late Republican senator of that name from Virginia.
Resisting management
Republicans and conservative media delight in highlighting such moments, posting viral videos, some of them exaggerated or distorted to make Biden look worse. But the White House has felt compelled to walk back some of the president’s more substantive ad-libbed comments, such as when he vowed a military response if China attacks Taiwan or declared that President Vladimir Putin “cannot remain in power” in Russia.
By Reagan’s final years in office, a new set of aides secretly assessed whether he might have to be removed under the 25th Amendment’s disability clause, but after closely observing him, they concluded he was still fit for office. (Five years after leaving the White House, he was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease.)
Still, aides tried to limit his schedule, monitored sharply by first lady Nancy Reagan. “That’s one of the first lessons we had, to not overschedule,” recalled Tom Griscom, one of those aides. Or to send excessive briefing papers at night, he said: “After a couple weeks, a message came back down from Mrs. Reagan asking us not to send so much up in the evening because he would read it all,” staying up late.
Biden’s advisers say he resists such management.
The White House seems equally determined to guard Biden against unscripted interactions with the news media. He has held 16 news conferences since taking office, less than half as many as Trump, Barack Obama or George W. Bush had by this stage and less than one-third as many as Bill Clinton or George H.W. Bush, according to Martha Joynt Kumar, a longtime scholar of presidential media strategy.
Likewise, Biden has given 38 interviews, far fewer than Trump (116), Obama (198), the younger Bush (71), Clinton (75) or the elder Bush (86). Biden has been more accessible taking a few questions informally after a speech, which he has done 290 times, compared with 213 by Trump or 64 by Obama.
His counterparts act protective of him, too. During his trip to Europe last month, foreign leaders sometimes treated him like a distinguished elderly relative.
During a photo opportunity, Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany gently pointed Biden in the direction of the cameras. Just before another meeting, a reporter shouted a question about getting grain out of Ukraine. Biden told Scholz and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson that he could not hear the question. The reporter shouted again. Biden again did not answer, so Johnson stepped in. “We’re working on it,” Johnson said.