Joe Biden needs to explain his slow and cautious walk
My wife and I had dinner with friends at Club Passim on Saturday, there for the release of Massachusetts chanteuse Lisa Bastoni’s great new album, “On the Water.” The 40-something Bastoni was singing about the choices and complexities of the first half of life. Our 60-something foursome was chatting about the contentments and frustrations that come in its second half.
How was everything, I asked Bill. He grimaced. A sore back, he said, had left him “walking like Joe Biden.”
That phrase instantly conjures up an image. A man who in his 70s mock-jogged onto the stage for political events, Biden now moves with a stiff and cautious gait.
Because his is the slow, smaller-stepped pace we associate with older people, Biden’s walk instantly conveys elderly status. And because the president is now 81, it’s easy to conflate his more constrained movement with the mental slippage we see with some in their 80s and 90s.
That conceptual canoe is being paddled energetically along by certain conservatives who proclaim with each verbal glitch or stutter, each misremembered name or misstated bit of history, that Biden has slipped into senility.
That’s not what one hears from people who meet or speak with him regularly. They report that Biden is generally sharp, in the moment, and analytical.
As the public saw with last week’s State of the Union address, mentally, the president is not just energetic but ready and able to spar with political rivals in real time. But that’s not what you think when you see him move.
Now, Biden has released an ad that addresses his age.
“Look, I’m not a young guy. That’s no secret,” he says with a laugh, before lapsing into the classic Biden locution “but here’s the deal.” That deal? “I understand how to get things done for the American people,” he says, listing some of the things he has accomplished: leading the country through COVID-19, capping insulin prices for seniors, guiding and presiding over a strong economy, and securing passage of infrastructure legislation and a historic climate package. The president then mentions his push to make Roe v. Wade abortion rights the law of the land, before responding to an off-camera voice requesting that he do a second take of the ad. Instead, he jokingly declares himself “very young, energetic, and handsome” and wonders why he’s even making an ad about his age.
The initial part of the spot works, but the second part, which attempts to laugh off concerns about his capabilities, doesn’t. Biden would do better to address the elephant in the room: the way he walks.
His altered gait is much remarked upon, and that change acts as a proxy for other concerns voters have. It may even lend credibility to baseless suspicions or suggestions that he has early stage Parkinson’s disease or dementia.
That is not what his physician says. Dr. Kevin O’Connor has attributed his stiffened gait to “significant spinal arthritis,” peripheral neuropathy in his feet, and the lingering effects from breaking two small bones in his right foot in 2020. That injury apparently came while he was playing with one of his dogs.
According to the Mayo Clinic, peripheral neuropathy occurs when “the nerves that are located outside of the brain and spinal cord (peripheral nerves) are damaged. This condition often causes weakness, numbness and pain, usually in the hands and feet.”
“The President’s gait remains stiff, but has not worsened since last year,” O’Connor wrote in February 2023. He said essentially the same thing this year. “President Biden is a healthy, active, robust 81-year-old male, who remains fit to successfully execute the duties of the Presidency,” O’Connor concluded two weeks ago.
But many Americans don’t share that perception. A new Associated Press poll found that 63 percent of respondents are not confident Biden has the mental capacity for a second term, with 57 percent harboring the same doubts about Donald Trump.
Rather than trying to laugh those concerns off, Biden should meet them head on. One way to do that is by making it clear that his changed walk results from physical issues and is not triggered by mental decline.
Older voters would certainly understand. Younger voters, meanwhile, might learn something eye-opening about aging.
Biden is a man with a considerable ego, someone who doesn’t like to think of himself as elderly. But it’s time to dial back that selfregard and explain himself, quite literally, to the American people. More honesty about his physical aging process would probably lead to fewer concerns about his mental acuity.