2023-11-20 08:16:28
Published20. November 2023, 09:16
United States: Joe Biden turns 81
The president is the oldest in the history of the country and this is his main handicap in his re-election.
Joe Biden believes that his advanced age is a sign of wisdom.
AFP
No matter how much he jokes about it, or uses it as a token of wisdom, Joe Biden, who celebrates his 81st birthday this November 20, knows well that his age is his main handicap one year before the presidential election.
In a recent speech to auto workers, the US president mocked concerns about his physical vigor and mental acuity. When someone fell, loudly, during his speech, he first asked: “Is everything okay?”, before saying: “I want the press to know it’s not me.” C This was a reference to minor falls that he may have had in public, and the images of which went around the world.
The Democrat is already the oldest president in American history and, if he wins a second term as he intends, he would be 86 years old when he leaves the White House.
A bet on his health
Biden is in good health, according to his last medical check-up dated February, but voting for him is betting that he remains in good health, without declining, at an already advanced age. However, according to the polls, this bet does not enchant the Americans.
A recent survey conducted by the Siena Institute in six key American states and published by the “New York Times” reveals that 71% of voters find Biden too old to be president.
Only 39% say the same thing about former President Donald Trump, who at 77 is not much younger. Questions about the mental faculties of the Republican, favorite in his party’s primary, have however increased recently.
For him or for the country?
Seeing the poll, a former top Democratic strategist, David Axelrod, urged Biden to ask himself “whether he’s running for his benefit, or the country’s interest.”
Before the 2020 election, Joe Biden had reduced travel, against the backdrop of the Covid-19 pandemic. But this time, he will have to travel all over America while assuming his overwhelming presidential responsibilities.
If his doctor describes him as “vigorous”, it is undeniable that Joe Biden looks his age. His gait is very stiff, and the voice of the president, a former stutterer whose speech has always been slurred, is often a whisper that is difficult to hear.
He now takes the shorter gangway to board Air Force One, rather than the less stable large staircase, which allows him to pose advantageously at the top.
Repeated blunders
His gaffes are extremely commented on, whether they are smoky evocations of an obscure John Wayne western, or a speech during which he addressed a recently deceased elected official as if she were still alive.
“A lot of people seem to focus on my age. I understand, believe me,” assured the American president in September during a meeting with Democratic donors.
He stated several times that he was 800 years old in a joking manner. While meeting with Chilean President Gabriel Boric, 37, Biden joked, “My only problem with you is that you’re too young.”
But he also regularly assures that his age is a guarantee of “wisdom” in the face of the bumps in American political life and the convulsions of the world.
Super seniors
For genetic reasons, both Biden and Trump are likely “super-seniors,” a term used by researchers to describe people who retain their faculties very late in life, believes S. Jay Olshansky.
The latter claims to have discovered that for American presidents, “biological time seems to pass more slowly” than for the rest of the population.
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