President Joe Biden delivered the State of the Union address Thursday night with the age issue hanging over his head, but in his remarks he debuted a new way of attempting to defuse it for the general election.
Biden reminded viewers in an energetic speech that former President Donald Trump is old too and implied the Republican is not keeping up with the times as well.
“My lifetime has taught me to embrace freedom and democracy. A future based on the core values that have defined America: honesty, decency, dignity, equality,” Biden said. “To respect everyone. To give everyone a fair shot. To give hate no safe harbor.”
Then Biden moved in for the kill. “Now some other people my age see a different story: an American story of resentment, revenge, and retribution,” he said. “That’s not me.”
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Translation: Voters may be saying this is no country for old men, but there is still a choice between a nice old man and a mean old man.
“I know it may not look like it but I’ve been around a while. When you get to be my age certain things become clearer than ever. I know the American story,” Biden said. “Again and again, I’ve seen the contest between competing forces in the battle for the soul of our nation.”
One side was about the future, he contended, the other about pulling the country back to the past.
An early version of this strategy came into focus in the aftermath of special counsel Robert Hur’s classified documents report, which contained damning references to Biden’s memory as part of the explanation for why there would be no charges filed.
“Based on our direct interactions with and observations of him, he is someone from whom many jurors will want to identify reasonable doubt,” the Hur report stated. “It would be difficult to convince a jury that they should convict him — by then a former president well into his eighties — of a serious felony that requires a mental state of willfulness.”
Hur said his team “also considered that, at trial, Mr. Biden would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview of him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”
Not a rousing endorsement of a man seeking to serve as president until he is 86 years old — “closer to 90 than 80 at the end of a second term,” as top Democratic operative and Obama World insider David Axelrod put it during a previous episode of establishment worries about Biden’s age.
Wags took to social media to quip that at least Biden was “well-meaning.” But not everyone was kidding.
“I’ll take a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory who will surround himself with younger, smart, well-meaning individuals any day,” wrote one X user. “Especially when the alternative is a racist, rapist, dictator who will surround himself with other racist, wannabe dictators.”
That State of the Union did not go that far. Biden nevertheless cast himself as a sympathetic elderly man who is down with democracy, diversity and inclusion, and Roe v. Wade.
This language might appeal to voters too young to remember when an early-30s Biden told an interviewer in 1974 that “when it comes to issues like abortion, amnesty, and acid, I’m about as liberal as your grandmother.”
“I’m really quite conservative on most other issues,” Biden added. “My wife said I was the most socially conservative man she had ever known.”
Ancient history now. But in the 2024 election, Biden needs to change the perception that he is less fit to serve than Trump. Part of that is to continue prosecuting the case on the Jan. 6 Capitol attack and the “MAGA” wing of the GOP. But Biden also needs to have voters stop thinking of Trump as younger and more vital than he.
Sen. Katie Britt (R-AL) spoke of Biden like an elderly relative whose car keys need to be taken away when she delivered the GOP response. “The free world deserves better than a dithering and diminished leader. America deserves leaders who recognize that secure borders, stable prices, safe streets, and a strong defense are the cornerstones of a great nation,” she said, describing Biden as “not in command.”
Trump will turn 78 in June while Biden turns 82 shortly after the election in November. Biden entered the White House and Trump would re-enter it at a more advanced age than Ronald Reagan left it. Before Biden, Reagan was the oldest man to ever serve as president.
Republicans rebuffed chances to pick a younger nominee. Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) is 45 and former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley is 52. Both took age-related shots at Trump during the primary. Biden was already in the Senate when they were born. Former GOP candidate Vivek Ramaswamy is 38, born during Biden’s third Senate term.
Predicting this line of attack, Trump has tried to frame the issue as being about Biden’s mental acuity and competence rather than his age.
Republicans, whose recent history of nominating septuagenarians includes Reagan, Bob Dole, and John McCain, have mostly been unbothered by Trump’s age. “I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent’s youth and inexperience,” Reagan joked in response to an age-related debate question on his way to a 49-state landslide reelection in 1984 at 73.
Biden’s age has been more of a sticking point with Democrats, especially those 30 and under. A majority of Biden’s 2020 voters in a recent New York Times/Siena College poll said he was simply too old to serve another term. Just 14% of Trump voters said the same of him.
Among all registered voters, 73% thought Biden was too old compared to 42% said the same about Trump. That’s a more than 30-point gap Biden’s team would like to narrow over the next eight months.
“I said, ‘You know what, Joe Biden is old. Let’s go ahead and accept the reality. Joe Biden is old,’” Hillary Clinton told an interviewer on Super Tuesday.
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“So we have a contest between one candidate who’s old, but who’s done an effective job and doesn’t threaten our democracy,” she continued. “And we have another candidate who is old, barely makes sense when he talks, is dangerous, and threatens our democracy. Pick between your two old ones and figure out how you’re going to save our democracy.”
Clinton, who nudged Biden aside to seek the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination, would have turned 70 during her first year in office if she had managed to beat Trump that year.