The query of presidential candidates' ages is greater than 4 many years old. President Ronald Reagan responded to it with a promise to resign if he was stymied and later with a clever joke that took his campaign from a rocky debate performance to a landslide victory in 49 states and a second term.
“I will not make age an issue in this campaign,” Reagan said in response to the query he expected in perhaps probably the most famous moment in campaign history. “I will not exploit my opponent's youth and inexperience for political purposes.”
The crowd went wild, even Democratic Vice President Walter Mondale laughed – and Reagan’s re-election was back heading in the right direction.
Today, Democratic President Joe Biden, 81, is struggling for such a redeeming moment after his disastrous performance in the talk against Republican former President Donald Trump, 78. Those 90 minutes last week raised alarm amongst Democrats who hoped Biden would prevent Trump from returning to the White House – and heightened concerns amongst voters who had long been skeptical about whether either of the 2 older men should govern a posh country of greater than 330 million people for one more 4 years.
More than two dozen individuals who have hung out with the president privately described him as often sharp and focused. But there are also moments, especially later within the evening, when his thoughts are jumbled and he stops mid-sentence or appears confused, they said. Sometimes he doesn't understand the finer points of policy details. Occasionally he forgets people's names, stares into space and moves slowly across the room, they said.
Biden has vowed to remain within the race despite signs of dwindling support on Capitol Hill.
“I'm running … nobody is pushing me out,” Biden said Wednesday in a phone call with members of his re-election campaign team. “I'm not leaving. I'm in it to the end and we're going to win.”
But based on an authority who covered Reagan's health during his presidency, the query he faces is way more intimate.
“The most important debate of the campaign is currently taking place in Joe Biden's head: between the part of his mind that tells him he is the chosen one and the part that is more self-aware,” said Rich Jaroslavsky of UC Berkeley, formerly of the Wall Street Journal.
A nation that’s becoming increasingly accustomed to aging
At its core, the query—how old are you to be president?—is one in all competence. And Americans have never had more personal experience with the results of aging than they do today.
A wave of baby boomers retiring means hundreds of thousands of Americans are more aware of when someone is winding down. For many, Biden's hesitant performance during last week's debate was a well-known reality check due to that widespread experience.
Trump appeared more forceful, despite lying or misrepresenting a protracted list of facts. When he challenged Biden to a cognitive test, Trump let slip the name of the doctor who administered his test. For now, he’s retreating from the highlight.
“Is this an episode or is this a condition?” asked 84-year-old Representative Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on MSNBC, reflecting the query that has been prevalent in Democratic circles this week. “It's legitimate – from both candidates.”
Reagan faced the identical questions even before he was elected because the oldest president up to now. In 1980, at age 69, he announced he would resign if he feared serious cognitive decline during his term in office.
“If I were president and felt that my abilities were limited before a second term, I would resign,” he told the New York Times on June 10, 1980. “I would resign for the same reason.”
However, that never happened. Reagan served two full terms and left office in 1989. In 1994, he announced that he had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. He died in 2004.
Neither Trump nor Biden have made an identical promise, and their campaign teams didn’t reply to requests for comment Wednesday.
For Reagan, the difficulty of age took a back seat during his first term, as all health issues focused on his recovery from a near-fatal assassination attempt in 1981. It seemed he could be headed for a simple re-election, and debate seemed a natural environment for the articulate former Hollywood actor. But his appearance in the primary showdown with Mondale of the 1984 campaign brought the difficulty of age back to the forefront.
The president, then 73, talked and hesitated. At times he appeared to lose his train of thought, at others he seemed drained. No one had ever seen him appear in public like this, recalled Jaroslovsky, who co-wrote an article entitled “New question in the election campaign: Is the oldest US president now showing his age?”
Important differences between 1984 and 2024
Reagan's age – or relatively his suitability for a second term – was now indelibly a part of the 1984 campaign, a striking parallel to what is occurring in 2024 after Biden's shaky debate performance. But there are key differences.
Reagan led before the primary debate, while Biden and Trump were virtually neck and neck. On stage, “Biden was terrible from the start,” said Jaroslovsky, founding father of the Online News Association.
Reagan's aides said he was drained. There were jibes that the staff had overprepared him, Jaroslovsky said. Biden's team spoke of exhaustion from two trips abroad that had exhausted even junior aides. It had been a foul night, they said. Blame was placed on the president's advisers. Democrats on Capitol Hill complained that Biden's performance had hurt their possibilities within the election. And press critics claimed that reporters had did not hold the president and his aides accountable.
On Tuesday, pressure grew on Biden to drop out of the race and leave Democrats with a difficult process to nominate another person. The crisis gripped the Democratic Party just six weeks before its convention in Chicago. It isn’t clear whether Biden and Trump will debate a second time.
Reagan's big moment got here in 1984 in the course of the second debate within the thirty third minute, when Henry Trewhitt of the Baltimore Sun said, “You are already the oldest president in history, and some of your aides say you were tired after your last encounter with Mr. Mondale.” At this point, Reagan stood on the ground and suppressed a smile. He was ready.
Trewhitt noted that President John F. Kennedy (the youngest elected president of the United States) barely got any sleep in the course of the Cuban Missile Crisis: “Do you doubt that you would be able to act under such circumstances?”
“Not at all, Mr. Trewhitt,” Reagan said. He later explained, “I'm in charge.”
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