Old white males

Joe Biden's 2nd presidential bid bucks public opinion

On April 25, US President Joseph Biden announced he would be running for a second term in 2024. At 80, he is already the oldest person to hold that office. Though the announcement set at rest all the speculation, it has also raised apprehensions within the Democratic Party and among its supporters. Mr Biden’s second presidential bid appears to be at odds with the opinion of the American people; 70 per cent of them don’t want him to seek a second term and neither do 51 per cent of the Democrats. Their apprehensions are valid. Age need not be a bar to accomplishment — some of India’s better prime ministers in the past, such as Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Manmohan Singh, were in their seventies when they assumed office. But the US presidency is unique; it is the world’s most powerful leadership position and demands abundant reservoirs of mental and physical stamina at all times. It is no coincidence that America’s successful presidents from World War II onward — F D Roosevelt, John F Kennedy, Barack Obama, and Bill Clinton —were in their forties or fifties when they took office. For Mr Biden, the pressures of leadership are likely to be more acute in the years ahead: The US and global economic growth is still underwhelming and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has ratcheted up geopolitical polarisation to Cold War levels.

If Mr Biden wins again, he will be 82 when he is sworn in. Whether he will have the capacity to work in the second term will obviously be questioned. Mr Biden’s age could be a factor that would energise the Republican Party, whose members in the House of Representatives wrote to the White House, demanding that Mr Biden take a dementia test in view of some gaffes —though these were the result of a life-long stutter. They see no contradiction in the persona of Donald Trump, who is the leading contender for Republican nomination in 2024, at the ripe age of 76 years. His fate, however, is tied up in several court cases.

The prospect of two old white males slugging it out for the White House, one of whom is battling cases for fraud, rape, and tax evasion, is unlikely to encourage many Americans to hit the hustings in November 2024. Though the US is struggling with an ageing population like most of the developed world, it is a youthful country compared to G7 peers with a median age of 38.5 years (the same as China). That apart, 42 per cent of its population is non-white. This cohort is growing faster than the white population. It is possible that Mr Biden is relying on the appeal of his vice-president, Kamala Harris, who will run on the ticket again, to allay voter aversion. At 58 years, pollsters are betting that the relatively youthful African-Asian Ms Harris stands a strong chance of carrying the ticket in 2024. The Democratic Party’s challenge is for Ms Harris to make a bigger impression with voters than she has managed so far.