Biden turns 78, will be oldest U.S. president
WASHINGTON
(AP) — President-elect Joe Biden turned 78 on Friday. In two months,
he’ll take the reins of a politically fractured nation facing the worst public health crisis in a century, high unemployment and a reckoning on racial injustice.
As
he wrestles with those issues, Biden will be attempting to accomplish
another feat: demonstrating to Americans that age is but a number and
he’s up to the job.
Biden will be sworn in as the oldest president
in the nation’s history, displacing Ronald Reagan, who left the White
House in 1989 when he was 77 years and 349 days old.
The
president-elect spent his birthday in Delaware at work on the government
transition, including a meeting with Congress’ top two Democrats: House
Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Sen. Chuck Schumer. During the closed-door
portion of the meeting, Pelosi presented Biden with a white orchid, one
of her signature flowers, an aide said.
The age and health of both
Biden and President Donald Trump — less than four years Biden’s junior —
loomed throughout a race that was decided by a younger and more diverse
electorate and at a moment when the nation is facing no shortage of
issues of consequence.
Out of the gate, Biden will be keen to demonstrate he’s got the vigor to serve.
“It’s
crucial that he and his staff put himself in the position early in his
presidency where he can express what he wants with a crispness that’s
not always been his strength,” said Ross Baker, a political scientist at
Rutgers University who has advised legislators from both parties. “He
has got to build up credibility with the American people that he’s
physically and mentally up to the job.”
Throughout the campaign,
Trump, 74, didn’t miss a chance to highlight Biden’s gaffes and argue
that the Democrat lacked the mental acuity to lead the nation. Both
critics and some backers of Biden worried that he was sending the wrong
message about his stamina by keeping a relatively light public schedule
while Trump barnstormed battleground states. Biden attributed his light
schedule to being cautious during the coronavirus pandemic.
Some
of Biden’s rivals in the Democratic primary also made a case on age —
while skipping Trump’s vitriol — by raising the question of whether
someone of Biden’s and Trump’s generation was the right person to lead a
nation dealing with issues like climate change and racial inequality.
Brian
Ott, a Missouri State University communications professor who studies
presidential rhetoric, said Biden was hardly impressive as a campaigner
but has proved far more effective with his public remarks since Election
Day.
Ott said Biden’s victory speech was poignant, and his
empathy showed in a virtual discussion that he held earlier this week
with frontline health care workers. The president-elect’s experience — a
combination of age and nearly 50 years in politics — conveys more
clearly through the prism of governing than the chaos of campaigning, he
said.
“The rhetoric of governing, unlike the rhetoric of campaigning, is collaborative rather than adversarial,” Ott said.
Biden’s relatively advanced age also puts a greater premium on the quality of his staff, Baker said. His choice of Sen. Kamala Harris,
nearly 20 years younger than him, as his running mate effectively
acknowledged his age issue. Biden has described himself as a
transitional president but hasn’t ruled out running for a second term.
“He’s
well served in making it known from day one that she’s ready to go,”
Baker said of Harris. “She’s got to be in the images coming out of the
White House. They also need to, in terms of their messaging, highlight
her inclusion in whatever the important issue or debate is going on in
the White House.”
Biden, in a September interview with CNN,
promised to be “totally transparent” about all facets of his health if
elected, but he hasn’t said how he’ll do that.
The campaign has made the case that Biden isn’t your average septuagenarian.
His
physician, Dr. Kevin O’Connor, in a medical report released by the
campaign last December, described Biden as “healthy, vigorous … fit to
successfully execute the duties of the Presidency, to include those as
Chief Executive, Head of State and Commander in Chief.”
O’Connor
reported that Biden works out five days a week. The president-elect told
supporters that during the pandemic he has relied on home workouts
involving a Peloton bike, treadmill and weights.
In 1988, Biden
suffered two life-threatening brain aneurysms, an experience that he
wrote in his memoir shaped him into the “kind of man I want to be.”
O’Connor also noted in his report that Biden has an irregular heartbeat,
but it has not required any medication or other treatment. He also had
his gallbladder removed in 2003.
A September article by a group of
researchers in the Journal on Active Aging concluded that both Biden
and Trump are “super-agers” and are likely to outlive their American
contemporaries and maintain their health beyond the end of the next
presidential term.
Some of Biden’s White House predecessors left
behind breadcrumbs about the dos and don’ts of demonstrating
presidential vigor, said Edward Frantz, a presidential historian at the
University of Indianapolis.
Reagan made sure the public saw him
chopping wood and riding horses. Trump, after being diagnosed with the
coronavirus, quickly returned to a busy campaign schedule — holding
dozens of crowded rallies in battleground states in the final weeks of
the campaign. Those events flouted coronavirus guidelines on social
distancing, wearing masks and avoiding large gatherings.
In 1841,
William Harrison, 68, attempted to show off his vigor by delivering a
lengthy inaugural address without a coat or hat. Weeks later, Harrison,
then the oldest president elected in U.S. history, developed a cold that
turned into pneumonia that would kill him just a month into his
presidency. It’s disputed whether Harrison’s illness was related to his
inaugural address.