40 years ago, Ronald Reagan shrugged off the fears about age that Joe Biden faces now

As Joe Biden faces George Stephanopoulos, Laurie Kellman recalls how Ronald Reagan swatted away the age issue with witty ripostes and a remarkable recovery after he was shot at the age of 70

Ahead of Friday's interview with George Stephanopoulos on ABC News, the verdict on Joe Biden's performance in the CNN debate on June 27 was that it was a disaster for the US president.  Picture: Justin Sullivan/Getty 

The age question for US presidential candidates is more than four decades old. Former president Ronald Reagan answered it with a pledge to resign if he became impaired, and later with a clever joke that reset his campaign from a stumbling debate performance to a 49-state landslide and a second term.

“I will not make age an issue of this campaign,” Reagan said to the question he knew was coming, in perhaps the most famous mic-drop moment in campaign history.

“I am not going to exploit for political purposes my opponent’s youth and inexperience.”

The audience roared, even Democratic vice president Walter Mondale laughed, and Reagan’s re-election was back on track.

Nancy and Ronald Reagan, then aged 75, strolling on the White House South lawn in December 1986. His remarkable recovery from an assassination attempt and his ready wit helped him swat away concerns about his age. Picture: Dennis Cook/AP

Today, Democratic president Joe Biden, 81, is struggling for such a redemptive moment after a disastrous debate performance against Republican former president Donald Trump, 78.

Those 90 minutes set off alarms among Democrats hoping Biden would keep Trump from returning to the White House, heightening concern among voters long sceptical of how either elderly man would govern a complex nation of more than 330m people for four more years.

More than two dozen people who have spent time with the president privately described him as often sharp and focused. But he also has moments, particularly later in the evening, when his thoughts seem jumbled and he trails off mid-sentence or seems confused, they said.

Sometimes he doesn’t grasp the finer points of policy details. He occasionally forgets people’s names, stares blankly and moves slowly around the room, they said.

 

Viewers were struck by Biden’s halting performance during the recent CNN presidential debate. Trump seemed much more vigorous — even though his contribution was littered with lies and misstatements. Picture: Mario Tama/Getty

“I am running … no one’s pushing me out,” Biden said on a call Wednesday, with staffers from his reelection campaign.

“I’m not leaving. I’m in this race to the end and we’re going to win.”

Later that evening, during a meeting with Democratic governors, Biden acknowledged that he needs to get more sleep and limit evening events so he can turn in earlier to be rested for the job, according to three people familiar with the meeting, who also spoke on condition of anonymity.

One person said the president joked that his health was fine, it was his brain that had challenges.

Biden argued that much more than his own political future was in jeopardy. In an interview with a Wisconsin radio station that aired on Thursday, he said: “The stakes are really high. I know you know this. For democracy, for freedom, our economy, they’re all on the line.”

US president Joe Biden and vice president Kamala Harris wait for the start of the Fourth of July Independence Day fireworks at the White House on Thursday.  Picture: Evan Vucci/AP

The interview on the Earl Ingram Show on the Civic Media Radio Network was the part of a media and public events blitz that the Democratic president and his staff have acknowledged as a make-or-break moment.

At the July 4 barbecue, Biden welcomed military families formally from a lectern. He then went over to personally greet the crowd for a few moments.

He suddenly grabbed a microphone and stood in the centre of the grass, explaining that there were thousands of people waiting to come into the party and he needed to duck back inside because the grounds were locked down as long as he was out there.

“Keep up the fight!” one supporter yelled.

“You got me, man,” Biden replied.

He also made a halting reference to Trump, who in 2018 skipped a trip to a First World War cemetery in France that Biden visited recently.

On Friday night, Biden is sitting for what many see as a make-or-break interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos. 

He plans to be in Philadelphia on Saturday and hold a full news conference during the Nato summit in Washington next week.

March 30, 1981: Police and Secret Service agents scramble to protect Ronald Reagan and seize gunman John Hinckley who fired six shots, one of which hit Reagan. The US president, then aged 70, made a remarkable recovery after the shooting. Mike Evens/AFP/Getty

However, it is not a given that his campaign will survive even that long with discussions that were once a whisper around who should step into his place should he bow out are growing louder.

For now, Biden is not ready to walk away. However, time is short for a possible change. The Democratic National Committee announced weeks ago that it would hold a virtual roll call for a formal nomination before the party’s national convention, which begins August 19.

But the question facing Biden is far more intimate, according to one expert who covered Reagan’s health during his presidency.

“The most important debate of the campaign is the one taking place right now in Joe Biden’s head between the part of mind telling him he’s the chosen one, and the more self-aware part,” said Rich Jaroslavsky of the University of California Berkeley, formerly of the Wall Street Journal.

At its heart, the question — how old is too old to be president? — is about competence. And Americans have never had wider personal experience with the effects of aging than they do today.

A surge of retiring baby boomers means that millions more Americans know when they see someone declining. For many, this widespread experience made Biden’s halting performance during the Trump debate a familiar reality check.

Trump seemed more vigorous, even though he lied about or misstated a long list of facts.
When he challenged Biden to a cognitive test, Trump flubbed the name of the doctor who had administered his. For now, he’s ceding the spotlight.

“Is this an episode, or is this a condition?” Nancy Pelosi, 84, wondered on MSNBC, reflecting the question dominating Democratic circles this week. “It’s legitimate — of both candidates.”

The streets of Ballyporeen Co Tipperary thronged with visitors who came to see US president Ronald Reagan during his visit to Ireland in June 1984. Picture: Irish Examiner Archive

Reagan faced the same questions even before he was elected as the oldest president to that point. In 1980, at 69, he pledged to resign if he sensed serious cognitive decline while in office.

“If I were president and had any feeling at all that my capabilities had been reduced before a second term came, I would walk away,” Reagan told The New York Times on June 10, 1980. “By the same token, I would step down also.”

That didn’t happen. Reagan served two full terms, leaving office in 1989. He announced in 1994 that he had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. He died in 2004.

Neither Trump nor Biden has made a similar pledge, and their campaigns did not respond to requests for comment on Wednesday.

For Reagan, the age issue faded in his first term as any health questions focused on his recovery from a nearly fatal assassination attempt in 1981.

US president Joe Biden speaking to the crowd during a celebration event at St Muredach's Cathedral in Ballina during his visit to Ireland in 2023. Picture: Leon Neal/Getty Images

He seemed headed for an easy re-election. And debates seemed natural settings for the smooth-talking former Hollywood actor. But his performance in the first showdown with Mondale in the 1984 campaign brought the age issue roaring back.

The president, then 73, rambled and hesitated. He seemed to lose his train of thought at one point, and appeared tired at others.

No one had seen him perform publicly in such a way, recalled Jaroslovsky, who co-authored a story headlined ‘New Question in Race: Is Oldest US President Now Showing His Age?’

Reagan’s age — really, his fitness for a second term — was now indelibly part of the 1984 race, a striking parallel to what is happening in 2024 in the aftermath of Biden’s shaky debate performance. But there are key differences.

Reagan was leading going into the first debate, while Biden and Trump were virtually tied. Onstage, “Biden was terrible out of the gate,” said Jaroslovsky, the founder of the Online News Association.

Than as now, Jaroslovsky said, the embattled president’s supporters provided vigorous spin.

Ronald Reagan sips a pint of Smithwick's ale as Nancy Reagan looks on in Ballyporeen, Co Tipperary, during their visit To Ireland in June 1984.  Irish Examiner Archive

Reagan’s operation said he had been tired. There was sniping about the staff overpreparing him, Jaroslovsky said.

Biden’s team cited fatigue from two overseas trips that had exhausted even younger staffers. It was a bad night, they said. Blame flew at the president’s aides.

Democrats on Capitol Hill griped that Biden’s performance had damaged their chances at the polls. And press critics asserted that reporters had failed to hold the president and his staff to account.

By Tuesday, pressure was building on Biden to withdraw from the race and open a difficult process for Democrats to nominate someone else. The crisis rippled across the Democratic Party just over six weeks before its convention in Chicago. It’s not clear that Biden and Trump will debate a second time.

Reagan’s moment in 1984 came during the second debate at the 33 minute-mark, when The Baltimore Sun’s Henry Trewhitt said: “You already are the oldest president in history, and some of your staff say you were tired after your most recent encounter with Mr Mondale.”

Here, Reagan squared his feet and suppressed a smile. He was ready.

Trewhitt noted that John F Kennedy, the youngest American elected president, got hardly any sleep during the Cuban Missile Crisis. He asked Reagan: “Is there any doubt in your mind that you would be able to function in such circumstances?”

“Not at all, Mr Trewhitt,” Reagan said. Later, he declared, “I am in charge.”

Just how much longer Joe Biden remains in charge is the question still to be answered.

• Associated Press