The body of a President
An outsider's view
In his 2021 lockdown special ‘Inside’, the comedian Bo Burnham sings a song which consists almost solely of the words ‘They’re really going to make me vote for Joe Biden’. All the incredulity is contained in that sentence; that of all the possible electoral options being presented to the 30-year old comedian, the one settled upon is the then 77-year old former Vice President. The contrast between the song’s thumping beats and the name, indeed the very concept of, ‘Joe Biden’, suggested a President from an era so distant to current liberal preoccupations that he may as well be extraterrestrial.
A penny for the thoughts of Burnham on them making, then, to really go and vote for Joe Biden again. How is the best-case scenario, to adapt Burnham, Joe Biden but now older? The proposition does not seem any less a relic of another time, and there is perhaps a slight air of added frustration that was once a little kooky has crossed the line into outright taking the piss.
Inevitably, we scrutinize the bodies of the older harder, as every time we see them we are checking for signs of further decline. Every time we return to see our relatives we look them up and down, seeing the arms a little scrawnier, the walk a little more awkward. It happens slowly, and then it goes fast. People are good for 81 and then they are very much as you’d expect for that age.
It is unavoidable then that a President’s body is subjected to scrutiny. It receives the close watch we keep on both the bodies of the old and the attention to perhaps the most famous frame in the world. Everyone ages in the job, too; I remember Barack Obama’s transition from suave young Senator to the grey-haired, hangdog second-term leader.
In addition, having an old person as the head of state impedes a sense of national renewal. Joe Biden has been, from where I sit, a President of national restoration; his legislative legacy, with the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, Inflation Reduction Act and CARES Act fot Covid relief, is as impactful, I’d contend, as any President since LBJ. And yet the optics of an old man in decline inevitably work against the idea of a period of national revival; at best, we can say that Biden’s grandfatherly charm, and natural orientation towards the prospects of future generations, have made him more likely to have achieved what he has. More likely to take big swings, too. Yet due simply to the natural restraints of ageing he can never have the energy to sell his own legislative agenda.
I say this, by the way, without any contempt or underestimation of the capacities of the elderly. I have always been close to older people; one of my first memories is of accompanying my childminder Len on visits to read and offer company to elderly in the community. I’ve always felt a sense of the preciousness of the old, and a sense of deep sadness that so much gets lost with them. I am delighted to have married into a culture, in China, which seems to venerates the elderly. My own father is well into his ‘80s; I have watched his health struggles and gradual decline in recent years with my heart on my sleeve. Though I hope my Dad sticks around for long to come, I have to say I wouldn’t back him for President at this stage.
The theme of this newsletter isn’t American politics. Still, I hope in this case my American readers might permit an outsider’s view. I look at Joe Biden now – and to be honest it was touch and go even in 2020 – and think, instinctively, This guy is too old. He fails that initial few-second check which ensures whether a politician even gets a hearing.
I note that other senior American commentators have begun to say that too. But what beguiles me in some of the reaction is the sense that a shibboleth has been uttered, that some test of loyalty has been disclosed, by stating it. What could possibly be ‘unmoored from reality’ (to quote Joann Walsh) that an 81-year old man might not be best suited to continue what was, to cite The Onion, the nation’s worst job? Why is this particular point so hard for many liberal Americans to hear?
The answer is, I’m surely, largely located in the hyper-partisanship of American culture, which sees acknowledging Biden’s age as to give succour to Trump. Trump is, as has been stated, a real danger to American democracy, although it should be pointed out that a country where there is, by this logic, only one viable choice at any election is already post-democratic. You are already beyond having genuine electoral choice if your only option is to continually vote for a party in order to continue having elections at all. What happens in that scenario if the Democrats do something in need of electoral reproach too?
Still, Trump threatens to reduce even that minimal veto against authoritarianism. Surely then though the logic follows that if Trump is indeed such a danger to democracy, it is all the more important to pick a candidate that can defeat him – and the Democrats surely have better options. In my view that includes, allowing her horrible personal ratings, promoting Vice President Kamala Harris to the top of the ticket. She may have her problems, but she’s unlikely to imminently die.
Of course, other old leaders have served with greater or lesser distinction; Konrad Adenauer, West German Chancellor, was 87 when he left office, and had performed well enough, needing apparently only a daily nap and to overnight near his workplaces. Lee Kuan Yew played an active role in Singapore’s government until his late 80s. For every positive example, though, there is a negative counterweight; Churchill’s second term in PM, from ages 77-81, was a model of legacy-tainting superfluity. That’s before we get into the leaders, such as Robert Mugabe, who become only more authoritarian and unhinged as they cling to power.
Even the more positive examples of elder leaders were not trying to govern in an era of the relentless media exposure that Biden would face in the second term, before the advent of which he is already being scrutinized like never before. This problem is likely to get much worse from here. Every gaffe, every mispronunciation, every press-conference moment of confusion will be magnified and interpreted in the least charitable manner; in the age of social media, there isn’t even the leeway once afforded to Ronald Reagan to signal with the odd wisecrack that he was not to be counted out yet.
As for the argument that Trump is also old, and prone to gaffes, that only works after the acceptance that having extremely old men running for President is a bad thing. It leaves us at a level no more sophisticated than ‘Our flailing old guy is preferable to yours’. And, as others have pointed out, it removes as an option your own ability to attack your opponent’s age.
What strikes me as odd is that, in a country with a business culture by all accounts as ruthless as the US, people feel unable to say this directly to Biden. That in the country of mass lay-offs with three days severance pay nobody feels able to have a quiet word. After all the Democratic Party hierarchy acted swiftly and ruthlessly to ensure the President was the 2020 nominee in the first place, unifying behind him as the candidate of the party establishment.
I am sure Biden inspires loyalty, as he’s a decent guy who has won (and may even still be able to win) elections. But all the liberal pep-talks in the world can’t overwhelm the evidence before our own eyes.
In a way, I think there is something in this of the touching American refusal to acquiesce to hard truths, the reality of physical and cognitive decline. There is a slight sense of ‘Well, it just won’t do to tell somebody they’re too old ’, even though we are talking about a job which overwhelms people decades younger. It is the same spirit with which Anthony Fauci said he was, leaving his government post at the age of 81, ‘pursuing the next chapter’ of his career.
This American attitude to tragedy in the refusal to accept it has many positive outcomes; it leads to innovation, to achievement, and is no small part part of the reason we have a world where octogenarians make it to President in the first place. Biden’s success as President is, as
of this parish has pointed out, already a remarkable story of success in later life. We should all want to live in a world where we can aspire to achievement in old age!But this doesn’t resolve the immediate situation around Biden, and the evidence of all our eyes is that this man now becoming too old for his job. The quiet voice, the slow walk, the off-puttingly distracted air. Joe Biden is still, I’d like to make clear, a very good 81, but he is, in the end effect, 81. This refusal to acknowledge something irrevocably tragic – that humans get old and are not what they were – risks causing a greater tragedy still.
In a way, I can’t make any stronger argument against Biden standing again then the fact that he is doing so. It was for many implicit in his initial campaign that he was running as a bridge, a respected elder overseeing the transition between generations, a reassuring presence while the country got back on its post-pandemic feet. Mission accomplished. Yet to renege on that, to revise his brief after tasting power, suggests a man whose judgement has grown impaired. The Biden who knew it was his moment to stand would know now it was his time to leave.
If Biden really is consorting with François Mitterand, perhaps the late French leader could convince Biden to look at the example François Hollande, the French Socialist leader who, seeing himself heading to certain defeat, stepped back rather than run again1. To look at the greater good and, after perhaps helping install his successor, gracefully depart the stage. No-one thinks Biden can do the job in four years, which is what people are being asked to endorse. In the Shakespearean drama of these populist years, Biden’s role now is the old King who leaves after three acts; the big exit that signals the new generation’s entry onto the scene. For what it’s worth, I think action will be taken, and a way found to allow Biden a dignified exit between now and November, as the mooted solutions to this problem, for Biden to show himself more publicly and volubly, are likely only to exacerbate it.
Delay in this case though seems to me fatal; if Biden refuses to accept this, if whatever the American equivalent of the men in grey suits is fail to have a word, there is one hell of a pantomime villain waiting in the wings – one ready to commence a second term which, whatever its particular merits, is unlikely to be lacking in energy.
I acknowledge Hollande’s decision to step down still lead to his party being smashed anyway. It did though arguably prevent a victory of the radical right.
Good piece. It seems very difficult to strike a proper balance between respect for and valuing of the wisdom of experience on the one hand, and recognition that ageing inevitably saps the energy required to actually do the job on a daily basis. The achievement of getting the job is not the same as the capacity to actually do it.
American democrats seem to be frozen in panic at the moment. It seems they fear that if they do persuade Biden to step down in favour of someone younger, all hell will be let loose and the monster that is Trump will win a landslide. It’s a paralysis which feels similar to that which gripped opponents of the Brexit chaos that we are now living through here. Too frightened to state the obvious, they tie themselves in knots trying to make the impossible work as the ‘least bad’ option.