The two evidence-free assumptions about Biden's age

How ageism gets mainstreamed

Some recent NYT coverage

The discussion of President Biden’s age in the media over the past few days has been quite grotesque. And the editorials and opinion pieces — especially, though not exclusively, in the New York Times (see photo above) — seem to be united by the particular goal of bullying Biden into retirement. There’s a lot I could get into, but I want to focus on two particular assumptions that the punditry keeps making for which there is basically no evidence: 1) that Biden’s age would keep him from winning reelection, and 2) that his age is preventing him from doing his job well.

Assumption 1: Biden’s age will keep him from winning reelection

We have ample evidence that Biden’s reelection is going to be a struggle. He’s tied with or even slightly trailing Donald Trump in most match-up polls, and he’s not particularly popular, with approval ratings in the high 30s. Just generally speaking, no, that’s not great for an incumbent seeking reelection. And it’s somewhat puzzling given the recent strengths of the economy.

Okay, that’s all certainly cause for Democrats to be concerned. But the key question is whether he’s unpopular or whether he might lose to Trump because he’s 81. And the answer to that is, almost certainly not. It’s hard to directly test this, and polling on questions like this can be unreliable — if a politician is unpopular, people will come up with all sorts of rationales for it. But generally speaking, presidents are unpopular when people are dissatisfied with the fundamentals of the political economy, and that includes things like recent memories of inflation and the high costs of housing, not to mention the lack of security resulting from the recent pandemic. And if people are dissatisfied with these sorts of things, they’ll blame the incumbent, and more generally, the incumbent’s party.

That last part is particularly important. It means that, whatever dream scenario pundits have come up with about who might replace Biden on the Democratic ticket, that candidate would be saddled with the same bags. Remember that Democrats have tried this before. Harry Truman was unpopular in 1952 and decided not to stand for reelection; his successor, Adlai Stevenson, lost anyway. Lyndon Johnson was unpopular in 1968 and decided not to stand for reelection; his successor, Hubert Humphrey, lost anyway. This gambit has a very poor track record.

Now, is it possible that at least some of Biden’s unpopularity stems from being old? Theoretically, yes — some political science research finds that voters prefer candidates who are younger in the abstract, although the fact that Trump is in his late 70s likely mitigates that. But as we’ve surely learned over the past few decades, polarization creates strong incentives for voters to look away from or rationalize other concerns they might have about their party’s nominee. There’s plenty of research suggesting that scandals and criminal indictments hurt candidates, but Republicans have largely made peace with that when it comes to supporting Trump.

Assumption 2: Biden is too old to do the job

But let’s turn to the other assumption — that age is preventing Biden from being able to do the job. Now, this generally flies in the face of one of the more impressive track records for any postwar president. Biden has made substantial achievements on major party priorities like climate change mitigation, renewable energy, school loan forgiveness, gun control, overtime pay protection, economic stimulus to get the country out of its Covid slowdown, ending an unpopular war in Afghanistan, and more, often working with Congress on a bipartisan basis.

But the most recent age-related concerns derive from a massive (and even deliberate?) misreading of what Special Counsel Robert Hur wrote in his report about Biden’s retention of classified federal documents last week, in which Hur declined to recommend prosecution:

[A]t trial, Mr. Biden would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview of him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory. Based on our direct interactions with and observations of him, he is someone for whom many jurors will want to identify reasonable doubt. It would be difficult to convince a jury that they should convict him by then a former president well into his eighties of a serious felony that requires a mental state of willfulness.

Notice what Hur is saying here: It would be hard to convict Biden because, in part, a jury would see him as an old but well-meaning man with memory loss. This was a judgment about a potential prosecution, not an evaluation of Biden’s mental health (which Hur is not qualified to evaluate anyway).

But news reports have nonetheless run wild with the idea that Hur has said Biden lacks the mental capacity to be president. Hur didn’t say that. It was unnecessary for Hur to make this note in the report, but it’s even less necessary to mischaracterize it as something it’s not.

More generally, I would echo what Julia Azari wrote on Blue Sky recently: There are all sort of challenges associated with aging, but for the most part, that’s not what Biden’s media critics are fixating on. They’re just going with he’s old and claiming that’s enough to be concerned about. This is extremely problematic.

If I were to ask a job candidate their age during an interview, I could get into significant trouble and expose myself, my department, and my university to a serious lawsuit. This is because age discrimination in hiring is actually against the law, and it is a sort of bigotry we generally shun as a society. Now, there are some jobs where you cannot hold the position above a certain age, such as being an airline pilot. Perhaps we might one day wish to amend the Constitution to put such restrictions on the presidency. But currently, no such prohibition exists.

More generally, if you’re going to lean in with discrimination against a protected class of people as a reason to exclude someone from the presidency and demand their retirement, you should have a pretty damned strong case for doing so. Yes, the elderly are more prone to illness, to mental lapses, to debilitating falls, etc. Is Biden showing any signs of those things? Are we hearing accounts of such things from lobbyists, members of Congress, White House physicians, and others who speak with the President regularly? It doesn’t seem that way. So if you’re not raising concerns about such things, you’re just saying you have a problem with old people. Or, worse, you’re saying you’ve identified a problem because other people seem to have a problem with old people. This is both bigoted and irresponsible.

I’m not particularly optimistic about the tenor of the coverage of this contest for the next nine months. But good lord, we can do better than this.