With Joe Biden Turning 81, the White House Is Focused Elsewhere (original) (raw)
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White House Memo
For an Aging President, a Birthday With a Bite
President Biden has no plans for a lavish public celebration when he turns 81 on Monday, even as Democrats search for a strategy to assuage voters’ concerns about his age by next year’s election.
The White House does not plan to call attention to President Biden’s birthday on Monday.Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times
Nov. 19, 2023
For many of a certain age, there comes a point when marking yet another birthday, taking note of yet another passage of the calendar, is not greeted with the same enthusiasm it once was. And that’s for people who are not even running for president.
For President Biden, who turns 81 on Monday, another birthday may bring more liability than revelry, offering one more reminder of his age to an already skeptical electorate. Unlike other presidents who have celebrated birthdays with lavish political events, Mr. Biden plans to observe his milestone privately with family in Nantucket later this week.
The best birthday gift the oldest president in American history could hope for would be a strategy for assuaging voters’ concerns, but that has been hard to come by. Mr. Biden and his team have taken the approach that his record of domestic legislation and international leadership should belie any worries about his capacity, even though polls have shown consistently that that line of argument has not been persuasive, at least not yet.
Some Democrats argue that Mr. Biden needs to do more to draw the contrast with his likeliest Republican challenger, former President Donald J. Trump, who at 77 has himself exhibited confusion in public lately. Mr. Trump has warned that the country is on the verge of World War II, mixed up the leaders of Hungary and Turkey, and boasted of beating former President Barack Obama in the polls when of course Mr. Obama is not running. If Mr. Trump wins next year and serves out four years, he would take over the status as the country’s oldest president.
Others, including some current and former administration officials, said Mr. Biden’s staff members should stop treating him like an old man they do not trust and let him interact with the public and reporters more. Some said the president needed to start getting out on the campaign trail more to show his vigor, deploy more humor to defuse the matter and even boast about his age rather than ignore it.
Others, however, said he needed to be protected even more, allowed more time to rest and not sent on so many draining international trips — what some cheekily call the “Bubble Wrap” strategy, as in encasing him in Bubble Wrap for the next 12 months to make sure he does not trip and fall.
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