As President Joe Biden celebrates his 81st birthday, concerns about his age and acuity take center stage, casting a shadow over his political future. Recent polls show him trailing in key states, with voters expressing concerns about his health. High-profile incidents, from falls to verbal gaffes, are intensifying unease among Democrats fearing a potential campaign crisis. Biden aides are navigating carefully, implementing adjustments and defending his capabilities. While allies say criticism over age is unfair to his rival, Donald Trump, who is also 70, Biden’s team faces the challenge of reshaping perceptions amid growing doubts about his ability to perform his duties.
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Biden’s 81st birthday highlights biggest responsibility for 2024
By Justin Sink and Jennifer Jacobs
Birthdays can be bittersweet, especially when you’re the oldest president in U.S. history.
As Joe Biden turns 81 on Monday, the occasion will highlight the extent to which age has become his greatest handicap as he enters the final campaign of his 53-year political career and a likely rematch with his predecessor , Donald Trump.
While the White House insists Biden remains healthy enough to serve as commander in chief, recent polls show him trailing Trump in key states, with voters citing deep concerns about his health and its acuity.
A Bloomberg News/Morning Consult survey this month found that voters in seven key states are more likely to associate old age with Biden than any other issue. In an open-ended question asking what they had heard about the candidates recently, hundreds of respondents cited Biden’s age. Fewer than a dozen did the same for Trump.
These perceptions were fueled by high-profile moments, including his fall at an Air Force Academy graduation ceremony, his trips down the stairs aboard Air Force One, the revelation that he was using a medical device to help him breathe while he sleeps and a series of verbal gaffes. Taken together, they have stoked unease among Democrats because the man who has presented himself as a bulwark against Trump’s comeback is merely an illness or injury resulting from his campaign’s plunge — and the nation – in a calamity.
White House aides have created a safety net of small accommodations, including regularly using a lower staircase to board Air Force One, to avoid giving fodder to opponents or the media. Secret Service agents and staff are exercising caution in the cramped backrooms, using flashlights and verbal warnings to guide the president’s path, according to a person familiar with the matter.
The president also interacts less frequently with the White House press corps, holding far fewer formal news conferences or off-the-record sessions on Air Force One and sitting down for only one interview with a daily print reporter.
Aides says its press strategy is deliberate and reflects the changing media landscape. And while Biden’s distrust of the press is a stark departure from Trump — and his own time as vice president — those who travel with the president maintain that his gift for gab has not diminished and that he often spends long flights peppering sleeping staff with questions.
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Biden’s allies also view the focus on the president’s age and health as unfair, considering that his main rival, Trump, 77, is medically obese and disdainful of exercising off the golf course. And while Trump regularly mocks Biden’s acuity on the campaign trail, he is prone to his own mistakes.
In recent weeks, Trump misidentified the city he was in, implored his supporters not to vote and falsely suggested he was running or had run against former President Barack Obama. Those mistakes became fodder for his rivals, including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who suggested on the campaign trail that Trump had lost a step.
Biden himself has made a habit of treating the subject of his age lightly. He regularly makes jokes suggesting he has been in Washington since the days of the Founding Fathers. When an attendee at a union event earlier this month fell off a riser — causing a loud noise to interrupt the event — Biden took the opportunity to laugh.
“I want the press to know it wasn’t me!” » Biden joked, before pretending to be confused.
The president’s doctors have also clarified that some notable traits – such as his shuffling gait following a foot injury, or the reappearance of his stutter when he is tired – have nothing to do with issues of acuity. Some of Biden’s verbal errors during his speeches appear to stem from his decision — like Trump — not to wear glasses in public, leaving him to squint while he reads from a teleprompter.
And although age and injuries have increased his golf handicap, people who interact with the president say he is dedicated to his workout routines and diligently follows a doctor-prescribed weight-training and treadmill program. of the White House and written on a card. He rides his bike, often at considerable speed, while vacationing at Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, and Camp David, the presidential retreat, in Maryland.
Some close to the president acknowledge their own concern when Biden sometimes seems to lose his train of thought, or deploys folkloric, and sometimes absurd, turns of phrase. Still others see behind-the-scenes moments where he thoroughly interrogates his aides on political issues and roll their eyes at the thought that he’s slipping up.
The assistants developed a manual to answer age questions. They show how his longevity has been an asset, such as during negotiations on Capitol Hill where he brought together decades of institutional knowledge.
“He used his deep experience to deliver unprecedented benefits,” White House spokesman Andrew Bates said in a statement, adding that the Republican Party’s criticism of the president’s age “failed in 2020, 2022 and 2023.
They reject the idea that Biden is avoiding the press as a provincial viewpoint as traditional media audiences decline, and note that Biden routinely responds to shouted questions at White House events.
“Our communications strategy is all of the above – and it must be to break through in a fractured media environment and an era of information overload,” communications director Ben LaBolt said in a statement.
Aides also point to displays of endurance, such as Biden’s trips to Ukraine – the first by a modern US president to a war zone not under the control of US forces – and to Israel in the days following the Hamas attack on October 7.
“There is nothing about his physical health, his acuity, any aspect of his performance that worries me in the slightest in this space – because I interact with him on a regular basis,” said Council Chairman Jared Bernstein. White House economic advisers.
Yet voters’ concerns remain. Now, campaign rituals, including chatting with donors at fundraising events and engaging in informal discussions with voters, offer new opportunities to combat perceptions of fragility — or directly fuel them.
Rope lines and fundraisers in big cities haven’t always shown the president in his best light. Earlier this year, when children of White House staff visited for Take Your Child to Work Day, Biden participated in an impromptu question-and-answer session. During his interactions with the children, he forgot that he had just visited Ireland and struggled – after having declared that they spoke every day – to remember where his grandchildren lived.
He mixes up the names of world leaders, often confusing China’s Xi Jinping with India’s Narendra Modi. At last week’s Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in San Francisco, Biden said he had forgotten the name of a reporter he intended to call.
Biden can’t afford these kinds of moments when 58% of voters say they have doubts about his fitness for office and 67% say he is too old to be president, according to one report. Harvard-Harris Poll released last month.
However, his colleagues believe they know how to overcome these challenges.
“If you remember our 2020 ads, they had the president in them — they had his voice, they showed him that he would just get the job done,” Jen O’Malley Dillon, who served as Biden’s campaign manager in this campaign. election and now as White House deputy chief of staff. “In some ways, it’s the most effective thing we can do, which is continue to show that the president is doing his job.”
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