(Washington) Joe Biden joked about his age, tried to gloss over it, suggested it gave him wisdom. Alas, one year before the American presidential election, the question keeps coming up.
The 80-year-old Democrat is already the oldest president in American history and, if he wins a second term, he would be 86 when he leaves the White House.
He messed up. He stumbled, the Air Force One bridge proving particularly treacherous for the head of the White House. These incidents flooded social networks and made his Republican rivals happy.
According to polls, this is a big concern for Americans who wonder what would happen if their commander-in-chief were unable to carry out his duties, or worse. Concerns that confuse the political messages of the Democratic camp.
His likely rival Donald Trump is 77, just three years younger, but voters don’t seem as worried.
In a recent ABC/Washington Post survey, 74% of respondents believe that the current president is too old for a second term compared to 50% who think the same of Donald Trump.
A leitmotif that we find in several recent polls even though the favorite of the Republican primaries, grandfather of ten grandchildren, would become, in the event of victory, the second oldest president after Biden, seven grandchildren.
This focus on age is unfair, said S. Jay Olshansky, who studies longevity at the University of Illinois. “Growing old is no longer the same as before,” he told AFP.
” Wisdom ”
“Large swaths of the population survive into their eighth decade perfectly capable of being president or doing whatever they want,” he continues. “On the contrary, chronological aging is synonymous with wisdom, knowledge and experience.”
However, as political time accelerates, the captain’s age will be in everyone’s sights.
Next year, Joe Biden will have to convince people that he is in great shape by campaigning “at least five days a week,” write William Galston and Elaine Kamarck in a commentary published by the Brookings Institute.
His last health check, in February, described him as “vigorous”, but his gait has become significantly more hesitant and his voice is often no more than a barely audible whisper.
His falls, including from bicycles, are broadcast around the world. He now takes the bridge – shorter – which unfolds from the belly of the presidential plane to avoid tripping again.
His gaffes are talked about, like his rambling answers about John Wayne films or when he said he wanted to lie down during a press conference.
But the outgoing president, who has always been affected by a stutter, is starting to change his mind.
He stated several times that he was 800 years old in a joking manner. When he recently tripped while going on stage in Philadelphia, he clung to a railing for several seconds, provoking laughter from the audience.
The conflict between Israel and Hamas and in Ukraine were also an opportunity for Joe Biden to proclaim the benefits of half a century of foreign policy experience.
“Super-seniors”
Donald Trump, who has engaged in crude imitations of his rival, is not free from gaffes either.
The ex-president declared in September that the United States was on the brink of “World War II,” which ended in 1945, shortly after accusing Joe Biden of “cognitive impairment.”
In October, Joe Biden’s campaign team released a list of Donald Trump’s missteps, such as when he said Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban was ruling Turkey.
In any case, both Biden and Trump are likely “super-seniors,” a term used by researchers to describe people who retain their faculties very late in life, says S. Jay Olshansky.
The latter himself discovered that for American presidents, “biological time seems to pass more slowly” than for the rest of the population.
But Vice-President Kamala Harris, 59, called upon to replace the head of state in the event of misfortune, is also a favorite target of the Republicans.
She is the first woman, first Black person and first person of South Asian descent in this position, but according to a Yahoo/YouGov poll released in May, only 35% of Americans believe she is ready to become president.
At the end of the day, voters might find that age doesn’t matter.
“I never thought about the age thing,” said Olivia Besgrove, a 23-year-old nurse from Missouri who leans Republican. “I just want someone who has a good head on their shoulders.”