Until Joe Biden started tottering – you know that quickened walk he does at a precarious tilt as if an aide has put batteries in his shoes? – Santiago, the hero of Ernest Hemingway’s novel The Old Man and the Sea, was probably America’s most-critiqued senior citizen. Determined to fulfil his ambition to catch a great marlin – not for the sake of sustenance but for the sake of pride – Santiago takes his boat out to sea and lands the fish of his dreams, only for squads of rapacious sharks to devour it down to the last crumb before he can get ashore to display his trophy.
Pride comes before a fall. In the case of the US president, it comes before his country falls headlong into the slime of a Donald Trump autocracy. As Biden hosts world leaders in Washington this week for Nato’s 75th birthday – an organisation that is a mere nipper, six years younger than Biden – he finds himself under a planet-sized microscope seeking signs of elderly “frailty” for a commentariat of unapologetic ageists.
Yes, indeed, it is stupefying to think that a country of more than 333 million people cannot produce one realistic contender for the presidency who is young enough not to have been alive during the second World War. It is equally pathetic that the US has been unable to bring itself to elect a female president and will not even countenance anyone lacking the sheen of wealth. But his advanced years are not Biden’s real impediment. His unsteadiness, the slurred speech and a sometimes vacant gaze appear to indicate the presence of a medical condition. In itself, a state of declining years is not a sickness. If age truly was Biden’s Achilles’ heel it would also be Trump’s. The Republican pretender turns 79 this Sunday and will be older than Biden is now by the end of the next presidential term – presuming the felon ever permits the term to end. Biden’s occasional hesitancy in answering questions could reflect consideration in giving an accurate and truthful answer. Trump – not so much. His lies cascade from his mouth. Yet the contest between the two is characterised as the infirm ancient versus the baby ignoramus.
By his vain refusal to step aside, Biden is giving older age a bad name. He maintains he is the only Democrat who can beat Trump. Wisdom, that great compensation for the vanished stamina of youth, seems to have bypassed him. As Santiago saw it: “I may not be as strong as I think, but I know many tricks and I have resolution.”
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Reader Chris Fitzpatrick, a slip of a lad at 66, suggested in this newspaper’s Letters to the Editor page last week that Biden should contact Willie Nelson (91), Tom Jones (84), Bob Dylan (83) and Mick Jagger (80) for advice on how to retain old fans, attract new ones and do “what’s needed to have audiences calling for an encore”. He also name-checked Judi Dench (89), for her eloquence, and David Attenborough (98), for his knowledge of the natural world, as examples of people who know how to act their age.
Add to that list Mary Robinson (80), the chairwoman of the Elders group who travels the world banging powerful heads together about climate change; Clint Eastwood, (94), still directing movies; Margaret Atwood (85), one of the most influential writers and thinkers on Earth and still sharing her thoughts with readers, live audiences and social-media followers. Productive old age is nothing new. William Gladstone, the British Liberal politician, earned the sobriquet the Grand Old Man for serving as prime minister up to the age of 89.
The Higgins presidency tells us something else too. It is that Irish voters are world champions at picking presidents
In this country, we need look no farther than Áras an Uachtaráin, where President Michael D Higgins (83, 18 months older than Biden) is in the final stretch of his second term as first citizen. He entered that office in 2011 with two dodgy knees requiring surgery. He was re-elected at the age of 77, beating contestants decades younger with his fierce intellectualism. Though the mostly ceremonial role of the Irish president is not comparable to the executive role of an American president, Higgins’s mental agility exposes a falsehood at the core of the debate about Biden’s capacity to govern by demonstrating that the human brain does not automatically shut down when 80 candles are lit on the birthday cake.
The Higgins presidency tells us something else too. It is that Irish voters are world champions at picking presidents. For nearly 35 years, the heads of this State have commanded phenomenal levels of support among the people; starting with Robinson, continuing with Mary McAleese, followed by Higgins. On paper, none of the three was the ideal candidate, what with Robinson’s apparent aloofness, McAleese’s folksy informality and Higgins’s prolix radicalism. What they had in common were big, bold brains. Voters appreciated those cerebral assets. Had the presidential election debate in 2018 dictated that Higgins was too old for the job, who might be sitting in Áras an Uachtaráin today? Probably the runner-up, Peter Casey, a businessman and reality TV fixture on Dragons’ Den who had railed against Travellers and “welfare dependency” during the campaign. Hurrah for the 56 per cent of voters who deemed Higgins’s age irrelevant and gave him their first preference.
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This autumn, he begins his final year as president. Already speculation is under way about who will succeed him. A well-known betting company is offering odds on Ryan Tubridy, a sure sign that the Dáil has started its two-month summer holiday and the silly season is upon us. An excellent communicator who likes books and possesses a household name, the broadcaster might even attract a sympathy vote for being the biggest casualty of last year’s RTÉ payments controversy, but would he win against Micheál Martin? If the Fianna Fáil leader wanted it, he could stroll into the Park, judging by his consistent poll ratings, even though he would have entered his 70s by the end of the term.
Age is a weighing scales. On the down side are less energy, more aches and pains. On the upside, greater life experience and wisdom, including the wisdom to know when to quit. That Joe Biden has been unable to do so is further evidence that there is something other than the arbitrary measure of age that is affecting his mind.