WASHINGTON – How old is Joe Biden?
“I’m 198 years old,” the nation’s oldest president joked to a crowd of reproductive rights activists at an event in late June.
At a campaign reception in California a few days earlier, Biden took a self-deprecating swipe at his advanced years while boasting about his foreign policy credentials. “That’s what I’ve done my whole life – for the last 270 years,” he said.
Bada-bing!
This is how Biden is confronting the age issue as he asks voters to give him another four years in office: By embracing it with humor.
Polls suggest that Biden’s age – for the record, he’s 80 – is one of his biggest liabilities heading into next year’s election. Thirty-seven percent of Democratic and Independent voters in a USA TODAY poll released in June said Biden’s age makes them less likely to vote for him. Just 3% said it makes them more likely. A 56% majority said it doesn’t make a difference.
Biden is smart to address the age issue head on – and to do it with humor, said Jennifer Mercieca, an expert on political rhetoric.
“Humor might be the best strategy for Biden to use,” said Mercieca, an associate professor at Texas A&M. “Humor suits him, and it suits the situation. Using humor allows him to acknowledge the issue of his age, which is an important issue for many Americans, while at the same time minimizing it. After all, his age is his age – he can’t change how old he is, but he can show that he’s still quick-witted (and witty) by making jokes.”
‘Watch me,’ Biden tells voters worried about his age
The White House responded to questions about Biden’s age by pointing to his experience and his achievements in office. Voters elected Biden in 2020, knowing that the minute he would took office, he would be the nation’s oldest president.
“No president has ever come to the job with more experience, and President Biden has leveraged that experience into a record of accomplishments that few presidents have matched,” White House communicators director Ben LaBolt said in a statement.
Biden’s record, LaBolt said, “stands in stark contrast to Republicans who want to take us back decades with their MAGA policies to erode reproductive rights, ban books and reward the wealthiest and corporations at the expense of the middle class.”
Biden, who would be 86 at the end of a second term, acknowledges his age is a legitimate issue but often offers this message for those who are concerned about whether he’s fit for office: “Watch me.”
Other politicians have also used humor to diffuse criticism – most notably, Ronald Reagan, who was the nation’s oldest president before Biden took office. In a 1984 debate with his opponent, Democrat Walter Mondale, who was 56, Reagan answered questions about his age by cracking, “I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent’s youth and inexperience.”
“Biden is a seasoned enough politician to know that Reagan, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and John F. Kennedy all used humor to successfully diffuse criticism,” said William Bike, a communications expert and author of a how-to guide called “Winning Political Campaigns.”
Humor can be an effective strategy because it can relieve pressure, diffuse difficult situations and can be used to avoid answering tough questions, Bike said.
William Henry Harrison was the oldest major party candidate for president before Reagan. In the 1840 campaign, when he was 67, opponents tried to say Harrison was nothing but an out-of-touch old man who would rather “sit in his log cabin drinking hard cider” than run the country.
“His campaign adopted the log cabin and cider as their campaign symbols, the electorate loved it, and Harrison won easily, beating incumbent President Martin Van Buren,” Bike said. “Defeating an incumbent president is incredibly difficult, but turning a negative into a positive did the job.”
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‘Try being 110’
And so Biden keeps using his age as a punchline.
At the black-tie White House Correspondents’ Dinner in April, Biden assured journalists and their invited guests that he believes in the First Amendment, “and not just because my good friend Jimmy Madison wrote it.”
When presenting the Commander-in-Chiefs Trophy to the Air Force Falcons in April, Biden mentioned Dwight Eisenhower’s remarks to the first class of the Air Force Academy nearly 65 years ago. “I wasn’t there,” he added, “no matter what the press says.”
And at a safer communities summit in Connecticut in June, Biden said he knows that many Americans who have lost loved ones to gun violence have grown weary of the long fight for tighter gun restrictions. “You’re tired – I get it,” he said. “Try being 110 and doing it again.”
Biden’s jokes about his age usually get a good laugh from his audience. But as a political strategy, will it work?
“It’s hard to know,” Mercieca said. “People have concerns about his age, but those concerns might not be their most important issue when assessing Biden’s presidential performance.”
Michael Collins covers the White House. Follow him on Twitter @mcollinsNEWS.
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