Growing Old in the White House

On Biden and ageism.

Cameron Smith/White House/HUM Images/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

Today we have commentary on Biden, ageism, and electability from political scientist

Seth Masket

, who writes the Substack newsletter

Tusk

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Somehow the political media are still talking about Joe Biden’s age and the current president seems to think there’s political payoff in going after his predecessor. I can’t say I understand why the advanced age of a former president is occupying so much air time while [gestures all around] is going on. But this seems like a good moment to talk about just how we think about the age of public officials, especially presidents.

Obviously, many people were concerned about Biden’s advanced age before last year. It was an issue in the 2020 presidential nomination cycle, and some even brought it up as part of the reason Biden declined to run for president back in 2016. But Biden’s age may have been a net positive for him in 2020; many in the Democratic Party were looking for a moderate, unobjectionable nominee as a way of pivoting from Hillary Clinton. “Safe Old Uncle Joe” seemed reassuring to many after the tumult of 2020. Ironically, of course, the candidate who got nominated because he seemed so electable in 2020 got shoved off the ticket in 2024 because he no longer looked electable.

But this raises a key question: A lot of people were worried about Biden’s age, but what exactly were they worried about? Were they concerned that voters would reject him because he looked old? Were they worried that he was no longer capable of doing the job? Or something else?

The question about voters rejecting him is an interesting one. There are a number of political science studies showing that, all things being equal, voters prefer younger (under 70) candidates. But it’s not a large preference, and this effect is mitigated when both candidates are older. And as we’ve surely learned over the past few decades, people care about their party a lot more than age, and will rationalize concerns they might have about their party’s nominee. There’s plenty of research suggesting that scandals and criminal indictments hurt candidates, but Republicans largely made peace with that when it came to supporting Trump. A Democratic-leaning voter, confronted with a choice between a 45-year old Republican and a 75-year old Democrat, may prefer a younger candidate in their heart of hearts, but will still vote for the elderly Democrat ten times out of ten.

A lot of people were worried about Biden’s age, but what exactly were they worried about? Were they concerned that voters would reject him because he looked old? Were they worried that he was no longer capable of doing the job? Or something else?

It’s also worth noting that we have a Congress that is rather old, even in comparison to other legislatures around the world. The U.S. Senate currently contains President Pro-Tem Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa, age 91), Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont, age 83), and Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky, age 88), with a number of other octogenarians in the House and Senate. What’s more, older members of Congress actually have higher vote shares in elections than younger ones do. If there’s a penalty for being old, it’s hard to find it among members of Congress.

In Biden’s case, it’s certainly possible that some Democratic-leaning voters were disinclined to vote for him—or to vote at all—because of his age, but people tend to not have a very good idea why they vote the way they do. Chances are, people were broadly upset about inflation, housing costs, and more. When they’re upset, they tend to blame the president and his party; and when they’re upset with the president, they’ll ascribe all sorts of problems to him, but mainly it’s their grumpiness over the economy motivating them.

So some Democrats were worried about Biden’s age because they thought it made him less electable. That is, they planned to vote for him, but they were concerned that other people wouldn’t. That’s the typical curse of prioritizing “electability”: it asks us to think about the preferences of people we don’t know, and very often we rely on a lot of evidence-free assumptions and stereotypes.

Okay, but were people worried that Biden couldn’t actually do the job as president because of his age or mental condition? Possibly, but if he was slowing down, that really wasn’t reflected in his presidency. His one term in office was an unusually productive one, delivering wins on a number of Democratic policy goals including investment in EVs and climate change mitigation, COVID relief, a bipartisan gun control bill, student loan relief, and more, not to mention seating a large, qualified, and highly diverse class of federal judges. (Ironically, age may have helped a bit with this; Biden’s productive relationship with Congress was at least in part the result of his many years in the Senate and the friendships he forged across party lines.) You might say that it was his staff doing most of that work, but that again begs the question of what the problem is; the work was still getting done. Presidents are supposed to outsource tasks.

Some Democrats were worried about Biden’s age because they thought it made him less electable. That is, they planned to vote for him, but they were concerned that other people wouldn’t. That’s the typical curse of prioritizing “electability”: it asks us to think about the preferences of people we don’t know, and very often we rely on a lot of evidence-free assumptions and stereotypes.

Yes, there were accounts of Biden needing lots of naps, mistaking people’s names, and not being at his best in some meetings, and his staff was notably minimizing his public appearances to avoid perceptions along these lines. No, that’s not great, but it’s hardly incompatible with the job. (See, for example, Ronald Reagan’s presidency.) And Biden’s staff trying to make him look good is about the least surprising thing that White House did, despite CNN reporter Jake Tapper’s ludicrous assertions that this was a coverup on par with, or exceeding, Watergate.

So why did Biden’s age become such a big deal for him, but not for Donald Trump (just three years Biden’s junior) or other politicians of a similar age? I’d argue there was a large visual component. That is, pundits will sometimes make arguments about a candidate, but those don’t really connect until voters can see the problem with their own eyes. In Biden’s case, that moment was his June 27, 2024 debate with Donald Trump. He was mumbling incomprehensibly. He had a cold and sounded terrible. (He may well have already been suffering the early effects of prostate cancer, but we didn’t know that at the time.) But perhaps more important, he had an occasional vacant stare that disturbed many people. It was, at times, physically uncomfortable to watch. And it offered very clear evidence in favor of arguments pundits and the Trump campaign had been making for some time.

This all goes to a much larger set of questions. As political scientist Julia Azari wrote, “Part of the problem is the lack of structures to address how dependent our system is on the health and well-being of a single individual.” We have a system of bureaucracy and rules that allow the government to function if the president is ill or even if he dies, but we really shouldn’t have this much riding on one person. Woodrow Wilson had a stroke his last year in office and was incapacitated for the rest of his term; his wife Edith basically ran the White House and largely kept his condition a secret. That wasn’t illegal or unconstitutional; it also wasn’t good.

Interestingly, old age and mental capacity are areas where the Constitution is silent. Among being over 80, suffering from cognitive decline, being at elevated risk for injury, or participating in an insurrection, the Constitution says only one of these is incompatible with the presidency. (It’s interesting who actually got pushed into retirement.) Traditionally the only other barriers to the White House were imposed by political parties, who got to decide whom they nominated. That’s usually a reliable barrier, but not always. For example, Democrats re-nominated Franklin Roosevelt in 1944, in the middle of a World War, while he was in poor health and just months from death.

There are all sort of challenges associated with aging, and those can certainly affect one’s ability to perform well in a high stakes job. But for the most part, that’s not what Biden’s media and partisan critics were fixating on. They were just going with He’s old and claiming that was enough to be concerned about.

Political parties, and American politics generally, have become increasingly dependent on and deferential to the presidency. In that light, it would be healthier for parties to occasionally reject sitting presidents as nominees and not automatically rally around the incumbent.

But the discussion over Biden in 2024, then as well as now, remains bothersome for me. There are all sort of challenges associated with aging, and those can certainly affect one’s ability to perform well in a high stakes job. But for the most part, that’s not what Biden’s media and partisan critics were fixating on. They were just going with He’s old and claiming that was enough to be concerned about. This is extremely problematic. A lot of people rushed to judgement on Biden without any evidence of problems, and they’re trying to backfill those issues today.

Age has an odd relationship to politics. We simultaneously complain that good candidates are excluded for being old, and also that the U.S. Senate has become a retirement home. If any good might come out of the current Biden obsession, it might be the chance to think about what kind of barriers should exist to the White House, whether our system is too oriented around the health of one person, and how we could enforce any rules we come up with.

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Seth Masket

is a political scientist at the University of Denver and the author of the “Tusk” Substack newsletter. He is the author of a forthcoming book on the 2024 Republican presidential nomination with Cambridge University Press.