The last time the age of the presidential candidate became an issue before Joe Biden and Donald Trump was in 1984. Ronald Reagan seeking re-election was 73 and there were concerns about whether Reagan can take the strains of office.
In the second presidential debate against his Democratic opponent, Walter Mondale, Reagan was asked the question and he shot back, “I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent’s youth, and inexperience.”
And he went on to add in typical Reagan fashion, “…it was Seneca, or it was Cicero, I don’t know which, that said, “If it was not for the elders correcting the mistakes of the young, there would be no state.” Mondale was then 57.
A Rematch Made In 2020
Neither President Joe Biden nor Donald Trump can say to each other what Reagan quipped about Mondale. Biden is 80 and Trump, the foremost Republican challenger, 76. Reagan carried 49 of the 50 states in that election. The Biden-Trump presidential duel in 2024 is far from the one-sided affair it was in 1984. The two men have to fight rather hard in many of the states.
Trump is basically fighting the election to avenge his defeat in 2020, and he believes, however wrongly, that he should have won that election. He is among the few presidents who failed to get a second term like Jimmy Carter and George Bush Sr. Had he won his second term, Trump would have been out of the race this time round because of the restriction that there can be no more than two consecutive terms.
But the more interesting fact about the 2024 presidential battle is that both Biden and Trump seem to be the most eligible candidates, at least as of now. The Republican presidential field has not yet pushed anyone forward, despite Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and former South Carolina governor Nicky Halley pressing their claims.
Biden, Not A Bad Bet
Democrats seem to passively agree that Biden is not a bad bet in a country facing polarised cultural and political wars on abortion and on LGBTQ rights. The Republicans have been pushing hard on anti-abortion laws ever since the US Supreme Court overturned Roe vs. Wade.
Biden is squarely in the pro-choice camp on the issue of abortion, and a quiet supporter of LGBTQ rights. But it would be useful to remember that Americans are more conservative than they appear to be, and the vocal radicals do not reflect the majority opinion. This can be seen in the fact that in 1968 and in 1972, conservative Richard Nixon got elected as president despite deep anti-Establishment sentiment of the youth and the middle-aged in those heady years of counter-culture.
The reason that the Democratic Party bosses seem to favour Biden is the fact that that silent middle-of-the-road majority will go with the octogenarian Biden, while Trump is appealing to the hard-core Christian conservatives. The Democrats do not want to tempt the Fates and posture for a radical agenda which might boomerang.
Needed: A Visionary President
America is in a state of confusion about its position in the world, and what it should be doing at home. Trump has his simplistic answer in ‘Make America Great Again’ (MAGA), which Biden has pooh-poohed as a dangerous platform.
Biden has no great vision of what America has to be except to maintain the status quo. He wants the welfare state measures which many of his Democratic presidential predecessors had defended to continue to keep Americans going. That is why, his emphasis on infrastructure and health care, and writing off student loans.
Trump has this vague notion that America must become the manufacturing giant that it was a century ago, something that may not happen. Biden is also making a desperate attempt to keep the status of the US in world affairs as that of the biggest power in terms of the economy and the military, though it looks a tenuous claim on both counts. His positions on Ukraine, Taiwan and South Korea are not really inspiring. Trump falls back on the old-fashioned American option of isolationism, that it should not be involved in the quarrels of the Old World.
Old Hands, Safe Hands?
Given the complexity of challenges that America faces at home and abroad, it is plausible that Americans want a president with an experienced pair of hands, and that is assured by age to a certain extent. Though it is certainly not a clinching factor.
All over Europe, the average age of leaders is in their 40s, a good 30 years younger than the American presidential candidates. In China, Russia, Turkey, the leaders are edging towards their 70s, while Prime Minister Narendra Modi is in his early 70s. The age dilemma will not be easy to solve. Perhaps, the United States, still the most powerful country in the world, might manage with an older leader at the helm.
But age and experience are no guarantors of ability and success. For America, as well as for other democratic countries, choosing a leader will remain a gamble. Biden and Trump as well as the people of the country must wait for the electoral dice to roll.
For once it cannot be said, “It’s no country for old men!”
Parsa Venkateshwar Rao Jr is a New Delhi-based journalist. Views are personal and do not represent the stand of this publication.
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