Old guard political leaders are defying one of America’s fabled political rites – the passing of a torch to a new generation. And some voters and those keen to assume power are frustrated.
The questions of age and the extent to which voters should try to judge politicians’ mental cognition – and whether it should disqualify someone from public office – are boiling up as the 2024 election season gets underway.
There’s never been an election like it.
Joe Biden, who is the oldest-ever president at 80, just launched a bid for reelection. Former President Donald Trump, the frontrunner in the Republican nominating race, would be 82 by the end of a non-consecutive second term. The advanced age of both men is doing nothing to quell their ambition and their mutual antipathy after 2020’s bitter campaign. But it also poses risks for both parties and has fueled calls that it’s time to move on from a pair born in the 1940s.
The specter of octogenarian commanders in chief is not the only age-related political flap. There was fresh speculation on Tuesday about the future of 89-year-old California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, whose weekslong absence from Washington as she recovers from shingles has jammed up judicial nominations and drained power from the Democratic Senate majority. And Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell recently returned from his own convalescence after suffering a fall soon after turning 81. Only Nancy Pelosi, the longtime House speaker, recently heeded time’s call after stepping down from Democratic leadership.
The rising questions about age spring from a number of building political forces – most obviously the longevity and unslaked ambition of some of the nation’s top leaders. Their prominence is all the more relevant in a polarized and narrowly divided government, where even a small shift in power can create wild shifts in the nation’s political direction. Democrats are still traumatized, for instance, by the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in 2020, which allowed then-President Trump to cement an unassailable conservative Supreme Court majority that may last for years.
In a similar way, a major health crisis for Biden or Trump, if he is the Republican nominee, late in the 2024 campaign could cause extraordinary political shockwaves. Many Democrats in Washington admit privately they’re nervous about the possibility. Others worry about the split screen comparison between an aged Biden and a younger GOP nominee if it’s not Trump. And Republicans clearly believe that Vice President Kamala Harris is an electoral liability for Democrats and are stressing that she’s a heartbeat away from the top job.
Haley stuns with hardline criticism of Biden
The debate over age also reflects the coarse nature of today’s political discourse, at a moment when the long-time standards of decorum and respect for the presidency and elder statesmen and women have eroded.
Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley, for instance, implied that it was “not likely” that the president would make it to 86 – the age he would be at the end of a second term. In an appearance on Fox News on Tuesday, the former South Carolina governor said that Biden “didn’t even know where he was the week before” and couldn’t specify how many grandchildren he had. (Her claims that Biden is unfit to serve are not backed up by any medical evidence.)
Haley, 51, is calling for “competency tests” for presidential candidates and other politicians over age 75 – a threshold that would conveniently include Trump. Her attacks on Biden also seem like a way to get attention for her campaign, which starts at a huge disadvantage against Trump.
Meanwhile, Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez – often viewed as a standard bearer for a new generation of Democrats – on Tuesday hardened calls for Feinstein to resign. The 33-year-old New York congresswoman argued that the senator’s absence meant her party couldn’t push more judges through the Senate at a time when abortion rights are being fought for in the courts.
“Her refusal to either retire or show up is causing great harm to the judiciary – precisely where repro rights are getting stripped. That failure means now, in this precious window, Dems can only pass GOP-approved nominees,” Ocasio-Cortez posted on Bluesky, a new social media app.
Feinstein’s Democratic colleagues have mostly defended her despite rising frustration over her absence – partly owing to the great respect in which she’s held in the Senate, which is still a more courtly institution than most in US politics.
Rhode Island Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse suggested that if she retired, Republican obstruction tactics would prevent Democrats from replacing her on the Judiciary Committee. “The problem only goes away when she comes back and sits in that seat and votes again,” Whitehouse told CNN’s Jake Tapper. Feinstein had asked to be “temporarily” replaced on the panel in April, but Republicans formally blocked such a request from Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer.
Some GOP senators have been defending Feinstein staying in office, though her absence while holding on to the seat coincides with the political goal of blocking or slowing the confirmation process for Biden nominees.
Republican Chuck Grassley of Iowa, who at age 89 is the second oldest member of the Senate, told CNN on Wednesday that Democrats should leave Feinstein alone after attacking her for years.
“They’re picking on somebody that’s older, and it just doesn’t show the proper respect for somebody that has been serving in the Senate for 24 years, maybe 30 years,” said Grassley who was reelected to another six-year term last year. “So let’s just leave it this way. They should leave her alone. She’s sick. She needs to get well so she can get back to work.”
It’s not unusual for questions about the health of senators to get attention in Washington considering their prolonged tenures. Segregationist Strom Thurmond was wheeled around the Senate and died at 100 in 2003 – a few months after retiring as a Republican senator from South Carolina. West Virginia Democratic Sen. Robert Byrd was still serving when he died in 2010 at 92. The comparison between the treatment of Feinstein and these two old Senate bulls has led to accusations of sexism. There may be something to this. But pressure on the California senator is worsened by the slim balance of power between the parties. And if she doesn’t return soon, her absence could hamper Democrats not just over judges, but in a debt ceiling showdown with Republicans in the coming weeks.
Feinstein, a pioneer female politician, has been fighting a case of shingles in recent weeks, according to her staff. But she has also faced questions about her mental faculties in recent years. Schumer’s notes at his weekly press conference on Tuesday, captured in a photo, suggested that he expected her back in the chamber as soon as next week, though he did not voice that view. A spokesperson for Feinstein said she was making progress but there was no timeline for when her doctors would judge it safe for her to return to Washington.
Biden and age
Questions about Biden and age will only get more oppressive in a campaign in which the president will be under pressure to constantly demonstrate energy, sharp wits and that he is up to the huge pressures of his job. While Biden’s physicians have certified that his health shows he is fit to fulfill his duties, the risks of some kind of adverse health event obviously rise with age.
Like most presidents, he has clearly aged in office. And his frequent verbal gaffes and moments when he appears to lose his train of thought only play into assaults by Republicans who argue he’s not fit to serve. Biden, however, has had a reputation for putting his foot in his mouth long before he became a senior, back to when he was a loquacious senator from Delaware.
The classic argument about old presidents is that these are the people who hold the nuclear codes; they need all their mental faculties. It was made against President Ronald Reagan, who left office at age 77 ahead of a later diagnosis with Alzheimer’s.
Concerns about age are not an invention of the media or Republicans. Many Americans are very worried about it. An NBC News poll released last week showed that 70% of Americans didn’t want Biden to run again – and half of those said that age was a “major” reason.
Despite this obvious vulnerability, the president stumbled somewhat over a question about his age during a rare press conference last week before assuring Americans he had carefully considered all the implications.
“With regard to age, I can’t even say – if I guess how old I am, I can’t even say the number. It doesn’t – it doesn’t register with me,” Biden told reporters. “The only thing I can say is that one of the things that people are going to find out – they’re going to see a race, and they’re going to judge whether or not I have it or don’t have it. I respect them taking a hard look at it. I’d take a hard look at it as well. I took a hard look at it before I decided to run.”
By the weekend, Biden used the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner to try to defuse the age questions by joking about his old friend and founder “Jimmy Madison.” But it’s going to be an issue for him all the way until November 2024, not least because Trump has raised questions about Biden’s mental capacity ever since running against him in 2020.
It’s fair to ask, however, why Trump – who turns 77 next month – is not facing similar questions. While Biden seems to have lost a step, the wild, erratic and dangerous decision making of a president who refused to accept his loss and incited a mob attack on Congress seems to pose equal questions of mental acuity and temperament.
This story has been updated with additional developments.
CNN’s Manu Raju contributed to this report.