Source: Politics<\/p>\n
It was always headed here, with President Joe Biden in his 80s and Donald Trump not far behind. But in the span of a few days, the wrinkled and sagging reality staring the nation in the face has become the defining issue of the 2024 campaign.<\/p>\n
Following special counsel Robert Hur\u2019s controversial characterization of Biden as a \u201cwell-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory\u201d Trump assailed Biden<\/a>\u2019s \u201chazy memory,\u201d dusted off his \u201cSleepy Joe\u201d moniker from 2020 and told a crowd, \u201cI don\u2019t think he knows he\u2019s alive.\u201d<\/p>\n Republicans accused Biden\u2019s handlers of committing \u201celder abuse<\/a>\u201d by allowing him to field reporters\u2019 questions about the Hur report. Biden\u2019s campaign, for its part, took to not so subtly suggesting Trump may be struggling with diminished cognition<\/a>, frequently calling him \u201cconfused<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n And Trump\u2019s own last GOP rival, former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, has made both Biden\u2019s and Trump\u2019s age an issue, renewing her calls for mandatory cognitive tests for politicians over the age of 75.<\/p>\n Unlike in years past, when propriety dictated treading cautiously around the issue, now campaigns are going to age immediately \u2014 and more explicitly than ever before. The emerging front in the presidential campaign is not an argument over ideology, but chronology \u2014 and who has the vitality to do the job.<\/p>\n \u201cYou could call this campaign, \u2018bedpans at 20 paces,\u2019\u201d said the conservative historian and Reagan biographer Craig Shirley, referencing the traditional distance at which a duel occurs but replacing single-shot flintlock pistols with medical devices for the incontinent.<\/p>\n Questions about the candidates\u2019 ages \u2014 and particularly Biden\u2019s \u2014 are saturating early coverage of the general election: \u201cIs Biden\u2019s Age Now a Bigger Problem Than Trump\u2019s Indictments?\u201d a recent CNN chyron read. The New York Times Opinion department featured no fewer than four headlines about Biden\u2019s age, leading the pro-democracy media critic Margaret Sullivan to call it a \u201cdestructive obsession<\/a>.\u201d Over on Comedy Central, Jon Stewart, the returning host of The Daily Show<\/a>, laid into both of the candidates\u2019 ages as liabilities.<\/p>\n Some of Trump\u2019s most vociferous backers will not even concede that he is old. \u201cDonald Trump is not an old man,\u201d Arizona Senate candidate Kari Lake told Newsmax last month. \u201cHe is a very sharp man. His cognitive abilities are unlike anything I\u2019ve ever seen. I talk to him all the time. He is incredible.\u201d<\/p>\n Biden\u2019s allies are, of course, apoplectic \u2014 particularly the eldest among them. On the Friday evening following the Hur report\u2019s release, the president\u2019s campaign blasted Trump\u2019s speech to the National Rifle Association in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. In a memo, they cite 30 examples of Trump\u2019s \u201cunhinged ramblings.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYou feel you have got to write about age, because everybody else is writing about age,\u201d said Ted Kaufman, Biden\u2019s longtime chief of staff in the Senate and head of his 2020 transition effort, who, at 84, is three years Biden\u2019s senior. \u201cBut in normal times, the press would be looking at which of these two people is most qualified \u2014 in terms of their knowledge, in terms of their character, in terms of their personal morals \u2014 to be president of the United States. That\u2019s what they\u2019ve done for 200 years. Why are we not doing that now?\u201d<\/p>\n These are, of course, not normal times. And the answers to Kaufman\u2019s question are many. At 81 and 77 respectively, Biden and Trump are in uncharted gerontological territory as their parties\u2019 oldest likely nominees: Biden is the oldest president ever to serve, surpassing Ronald Reagan, who left office just short of his 78th birthday; Trump is not far behind.<\/p>\n What\u2019s more, 59 percent of Americans think both Biden and Trump are too old, according to an ABC News\/Ipsos poll<\/a> (one that Haley\u2019s campaign was all too pleased to circulate to reporters, framing the decision between Biden and Trump as one between \u201cold and senile\u201d and \u201cold and unhinged,\u201d respectively.)<\/p>\n Politics makes for strange bedfellows, and the Haley campaign\u2019s framing is not too dissimilar to Kaufman\u2019s.<\/p>\n \u201cThis drives me crazy,\u201d Kaufman said of what he says is a false equivalency in the press\u2019 coverage of Biden\u2019s age. \u201cHere we are, a presidential race with seven months to go, and the major issue to the press is age \u2026 Which one is in better shape? Which one’s riding bikes, and which one\u2019s telling Russia to invade NATO? It goes back to Hillary and emails. What has to do with what’s going on in my life?”<\/p>\n In this political season, though, there\u2019s no escaping it. And even down-ballot candidates are getting in on the action. During a California Senate debate on Monday, Democratic Rep. Katie Porter<\/a> said \u201cage limits are a conversation for all elected officials that we ought to be having<\/a>.\u201d Across the country, in the race to replace former Rep. George Santos in New York, Democrat Tom Suozzi told FOX 5 New York of Biden, \u201cThe bottom line is, he\u2019s old.<\/a>\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI don’t think the media has yet reconciled its own coverage now with its past coverage,\u201d said Biden\u2019s outgoing climate envoy John Kerry, who turned 80 in December, and who has served alongside Biden in the Senate and in senior roles across two administrations. \u201cBecause if you go back to when Joe Biden was chosen as VP in 2008, I remember the press was obsessed with this idea of gaffes. They hung on every word. There was a whole lot of writing about this back when Biden was in his early 60s. And by the way, none of it stopped him from being a very successful vice president. Now suddenly that he’s 80, everyone\u2019s writing furiously as if this must automatically be about age when their own body of writing proves otherwise. So people might want to dig a little deeper and challenge their own narratives.\u201d<\/p>\n Inside the Biden administration, the president\u2019s allies are certainly trying to. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, Biden\u2019s youngest Cabinet member at 42, subtly raised his former challenger\u2019s age as he talked about the need for a new generational leadership during the 2020 Democratic primary. But in an interview on Tuesday, he said that in recent interactions, he\u2019s found his boss still is sharp.<\/p>\n Once, while briefing him on railroad investments, Buttigieg brought along an expert from the Federal Rail Administration, who could not answer all of Biden\u2019s questions. “He was asking such detailed questions that we actually had to dial in another expert from Amtrak to get to some of the things he was asking about,\u201d Buttigieg said.<\/p>\n Few people in politics at present volunteer that they\u2019re as familiar with the process of aging as former Rep. Lee Hamilton, who served with Biden in Congress.<\/p>\n At 92, the Democratic former vice chair of the 9\/11 Commission, no longer spends as much time taking his recumbent bike out for a spin around the streets of Bloomington, Indiana, where he still visits his office at Indiana University each weekday. Instead, he is mostly confined to his stationary bike, on which he pedals about two miles each day. He still writes a column on politics and international relations that circulates statewide.<\/p>\n Hamilton admitted the president is \u201cnot the same Biden I knew in the Congress decades ago.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cLook, I\u2019d prefer he would be 20 to 30 years younger, but he\u2019s not,\u201d Hamilton said. \u201cWe don’t get what we\u2019d like, we get what we have in front of us. The choice is him or the other guy \u2014 Trump \u2014 and I\u2019m not on his side, of course.\u201d<\/p>\n Trump, he said, is also not \u201cas fluent or articulate as he once was. I understand that myself. It is a process of aging. I’ve experienced it myself.\u201d<\/p>\n But all of Hamilton\u2019s years have won him some wisdom, stoicism even \u2014 the kind the rest of the country will learn soon enough as it surveys its options at the top of the ticket. The party\u2019s voters, after all, have handed Trump and Biden decisive victories in the early nominating states, despite their advanced ages and polls that suggest a widespread desire for someone younger.<\/p>\n \u201cWe take things as they are,\u201d Hamilton added, \u201cnot as we would like them to be.\u201d<\/p>\n