Comedian-in-Chief
Two old men walk into an election. "One of you is old," the media bemoans. So is, they rarely add, the other one.
"I will not make age an issue of this campaign,” declared Ronald Reagan, 73, during the second 1984 presidential debate. “I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent's youth and inexperience.”
It was a perfect one-liner: The audience erupted in laughter. The media dramatically reduced its focus on the incumbent’s age. And in November, Reagan won by a landslide—10 years before being diagnosed with Alzheimer's.
Humor has long helped presidents successfully manage PR crises, but when it comes to age, it's the winning strategy.
Anger is not. “I thought to myself, was it any of their damn business,” President Joseph R. Biden, 81, explained during a press conference following special counsel Robert Hur’s report. Hur’s questions about the late Beau Biden, the president seemed to be saying, was as outrageous, as was the unusual choice Hur made to include it, all to depict the aged president as plagued by troublesome memory lapses. It didn’t work. “Biden rages,” ABC reported, and the media doubled down, threatening to bury the incumbent under an avalanche of negative coverage.
Biden consistently polls as “confused,” yet Trump, who is only three years younger than the sitting president, and has had far more “senior moments” in public, does not. In a sworn deposition, Trump recently confused a woman who accused him of rape with one of his ex-wives. He mistook Nikki Haley, a Republican he appointed U.S. Ambassador to the UN in 2017, with Democrat Nancy Pelosi.
Biden has thin, silver hair, and his wrinkled skin has visible liver spots—all of which Trump has, too. It is masked by a comedically heavy spray tan, blondish hair dye, volumizing hairspray, and heavy makeup. One looks like Grandpa, and the other looks like a reality television star.
In 2020, Trump dyed his hair gray. He was suffering from a low approval rating after his disastrous mishandling of the coronavirus, among other domestic crises. It was a serious time for serious candidates, and after years of ignoring pleas to be “more presidential,” he half-heartedly attempted to look the part.
The silver hair didn’t work–nor did his attempt to remain in office after he lost to Biden, ending George Washington’s nearly 250-yearlong precedent: the peaceful transition of power.
Trump is back, oranger than ever, while Biden continues to age naturally–though the photos Trump posts of him, using heavy filters, make it seem as though he’s rapidly deteriorating.
The headlines following Hur’s report should have been something like this: President Joseph R. Biden, unlike Republican challenger Donald J. Trump, has not criminally mishandled classified documents. It may be too late for Biden to get ahead of the age issue with a joke, but Trump shouldn’t be able to evade it because he is one.
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