Questions about Biden’s age echo similar concerns that Ronald Reagan, the 40th president of the United States, faced in 1984.
Brian Calfano, an assistant professor of political science and journalism at The University of Cincinnati, said voters—especially if they're ardent supporters—will end up supporting the candidate effectively no matter what.
“And I think that's why you see some discussion about polling nowadays with Biden and finding in the end, that after all the hand-wringing about Biden's performance in the debate, that he's effectively still tied with Trump,” Calfano said. “But with Reagan 40 years ago, it's important to point out he had a pretty bad debate performance in the first two debates with former Vice President Walter Mondale. His second debate is when he got off the quip saying that he was not going to make his opponent's youth and inexperience part of his campaign rhetoric. But then he ended up flubbing the end of that debate by running out of time when he was trying to tell a story, effectively meaning that the president, 40 years ago, faced many of the similar questions that you've got Biden facing now. But voters elected Reagan in a landslide in 84, just like they had done in 1980.”
Republicans have said Biden’s team has reduced his schedule to hide what they describe as his cognitive decline. Calfano said there were similar questions about Reagan.
“And that extended into the second term,” Calfano said. “Reagan was accused of falling asleep in cabinet meetings. He was accused of being interested only in passing out jelly beans during those encounters. And I'm not making that up. I mean, this is all on the record. And he actually had a change of chief of staff back in '87. The new chief of staff at the time, Howard Baker, who was a former senator from Tennessee, was told that he needed to evaluate Reagan because it may be necessary to invoke the 25th amendment, which as you know with the cabinet deciding that the president is incapacitated, you can actually remove the president from office due to that incapacitation if a majority of the cabinet agrees. None of that ever happened. Baker says he found Reagan to be engaged when Reagan had to be engaged. But there were times, certainly, when Reagan was, let's say, less enthusiastic about some of the aspects of his job. Just like you might consider Biden a little bit, let's say, less into the nitty gritty of his work.”
In 1980, at 69, Reagan pledged to resign if he sensed serious cognitive decline while in office. President Biden was asked a similar question Thursday at a solo press conference following the NATO Summit in Washington where he misspoke and called Vice President Kamala Harris Vice President Trump.
“At the end of the day, Reagan was good with jokes,” Calfano said. “Reagan was really good with personality. That kind of gave him this Teflon quality. Biden doesn't have that. He does not have Reagan's loquaciousness. He doesn't have Reagan's gift of gab and use of words. And I think that's what ends up hurting Biden more than it hurt Reagan. But certainly, 40 years ago, you can draw some parallels that there were a lot of questions about Reagan's mental fitness heading into a second term.”