The question of presidential candidates’ ages is more than four decades ancient. President Ronald Reagan responded to it with a promise to resign if he was stymied and later with a clever joke that took his campaign from a rocky debate performance to a landslide victory in 49 states and a second term.
“I will not make age an issue in this campaign,” Reagan said in response to the question that was likely to come, in perhaps the most notable moment of dropping the microphone. “I will not exploit the youth and inexperience of my opponent for political purposes.”
The crowd went wild, even Democratic Vice President Walter Mondale laughed – and Reagan’s re-election was back on track.
Today, Democratic President Joe Biden, 81, is struggling for such a redeeming moment after his disastrous performance in the debate against Republican former President Donald Trump, 77. Those 90 minutes last week raised alarm among Democrats who hoped Biden would prevent Trump from returning to the White House – and heightened concerns among voters who have long been skeptical about whether either of the two older men should govern a complicated country of more than 330 million people for another four years.
A nation that is becoming more and more accustomed to aging
At its core, the question—how ancient is too ancient to be president?—is one of competence. And Americans have never had more personal experience with the effects of aging than they do today.
A wave of baby boomers retiring means millions of Americans are more aware of when someone is winding down. For many, Biden’s hesitant performance during Thursday’s debate was a familiar reality check because of that widespread experience.
Trump appeared more forceful, despite lying or misrepresenting a long list of facts. When challenging Biden to a cognitive test, Trump let slip the name of the doctor who administered his test.
“Is this an episode or is this a condition?” asked 84-year-old Representative Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on MSNBC, expressing the question that has been prevalent in Democratic circles this week. “It’s legitimate – by both candidates.”
Reagan faced the same questions even before he was elected as the oldest president to date. In 1980, at age 69, he announced he would resign if he feared solemn cognitive decline during his term in office.
“If I were president and felt that my abilities were limited before a second term, I would resign,” he told the New York Times on June 10, 1980. “I would resign for the same reason.”
However, that never happened. Reagan served two full terms and left office in 1989. In 1994, he announced that he had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. He died in 2004.
Neither Trump nor Biden have made a similar promise, and their campaign teams did not respond to requests for comment Wednesday.
For Reagan, the issue of age took a back seat during his first term, as all health issues focused on his recovery from a near-fatal assassination attempt in 1981. It seemed he would be headed for an straightforward re-election, and debate seemed a natural environment for the articulate former Hollywood actor. But his appearance in the first showdown with Mondale of the 1984 campaign brought the issue of age back to the forefront.
The president, then 73, talked and hesitated. At times he seemed to lose his train of thought, at others he seemed tired. No one had ever seen him appear so public, recalled Rich Jaroslovsky, then a White House correspondent for the Wall Street Journal and co-author of an article titled “New question in the race: Is the oldest U.S. president showing his age?”
Important differences between 1984 and 2024
Reagan’s age – or rather his suitability for a second term – was now indelibly part of the 1984 campaign, a striking parallel to what is happening in 2024 after Biden’s shaky debate performance. But there are key differences.
Reagan was in the lead before the first debate, while Biden and Trump were virtually tied. On stage, “Biden was terrible from the start,” said Jaroslovsky, now founder of the Online News Association and a lecturer in the history of digital journalism at the University of California, Berkeley.
Then as now, says Jaroslovsky, the supporters of the troubled president provided vigorous propaganda.
Reagan’s aides said he was tired. There were jibes that the staff had overprepared him, Jaroslovsky said. Biden’s team spoke of exhaustion from two trips abroad that had exhausted even junior aides. It had been a bad night, they said. Blame was placed on the president’s advisers. Democrats on Capitol Hill complained that Biden’s performance had hurt their chances in the election. And press critics claimed that reporters had failed to hold the president and his aides accountable.
On Tuesday, pressure grew on Biden to drop out of the race and leave Democrats with a arduous process to nominate someone else. The crisis gripped the Democratic Party just six weeks before its convention in Chicago. It is not clear whether Biden and Trump will debate a second time.
Reagan’s gigantic moment in 1984 came 33 minutes in, when Henry Trewhitt of the Baltimore Sun said, “You are already the oldest president in history, and some of your aides say you were tired after your recent encounter with Mr. Mondale.” At this point, Reagan got down on the floor and suppressed a smile. He was ready.
Trewhitt noted that President John F. Kennedy (the youngest elected president of the United States) barely got any sleep during the Cuban Missile Crisis: “Do you have any doubt that you would be able to act under such circumstances?”
“Not at all, Mr. Trewhitt,” Reagan said. He later explained, “I’m in charge.”
