The age question for presidential candidates is more than 40 years old. President Ronald Reagan answered the question with a promise to resign if he became unwell, and later with a clever joke that took his campaign from a stumbling debate performance to a landslide win in 49 states and a second term.
“I will not make age an issue of this campaign,” Reagan said when asked what he knew would come in perhaps the most famous mic-drop moment in campaign history. “I will not exploit my opponent’s youth and inexperience for political purposes.”
The crowd roared, and even Democratic Vice President Walter Mondale laughed. And just like that, Reagan’s re-election was back on track.
Today, Democratic President Joe Biden, 81, is struggling with such a redemptive moment after a disastrous debate with Republican former President Donald Trump, 77. Those 90 minutes last week raised eyebrows among Democrats hoping Biden would keep Trump from returning to the White House — and heightened concerns among voters long skeptical about how this older man would rule a complex country of more than 330 million people for another four years.
At its core, the question — how old is too old to be president? — is about competence. And Americans have never had such a personal experience with the effects of aging as they do today.
A wave of retirements baby boomers means that millions of Americans are more aware when they see someone dropping out. For many, this widespread experience made Biden’s hesitant performance during Thursday debate a well-known reality check.
Trump seemed more powerful, even though he lied about or misrepresented a long list of factsWhen he challenged Biden to a cognitive test, Trump got the doctor’s name wrong who had administered his own.
“Is this an episode, or is this a condition?” Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., 84, asked on MSNBC, echoing the question that has dominated Democratic circles this week. “It’s legitimate — from both candidates.”
Reagan faced the same questions even before he was elected, the oldest president yet. In 1980, at age 69, he vowed to resign if he experienced serious cognitive decline while in office.
“If I were president and had any feeling that my capabilities were diminished before a second term, I would resign,” he told the New York Times on June 10, 1980. “In the same way, I would resign.”
That didn’t happen. Reagan served two full terms and left office in 1989. In 1994, he announced that he had been diagnosed Alzheimer disease. He died in 2004.
Neither Trump nor Biden has made a similar pledge, and their campaigns did not respond to requests for comment on Wednesday.
For Reagan, the age issue disappeared in his first term, as all health questions focused on his recovery from a near-fatal assassination attempt in 1981. He seemed headed for an easy re-election. And debates seemed natural settings for the smooth-talking former Hollywood actor. But his performance in the first showdown with Mondale of the 1984 campaign brought the age issue roaring back.
The president, then 73, babbled and hesitated. He seemed at one point to lose his bearings and at other times to look tired. No one had ever seen him act like this in public, recalled Rich Yaroslovsky, then a White House correspondent for the Wall Street Journal and co-author of an article headlined, “New Question in the Race: Is America’s Oldest President Now Showing His Age?”
Reagan’s age—in effect, his fitness for a second term—was now an indelible part of the 1984 race, a striking parallel to what’s happening in 2024 after Biden’s shaky debate performance. But there are important differences.
Reagan led in the first debate, while Biden and Trump were virtually tied. On stage, Yaroslovsky said, “Biden was terrible from the beginning,” now the founder of the Online News Association and a professor at the University of California Berkeley.
Then, as now, the beleaguered president’s supporters put a powerful spin on it, Yaroslovsky said.
Reagan’s surgery indicated he was tired. There were snarls about the staff over-preparing him, Yaroslovsky said. Biden’s team cited fatigue from two foreign trips that had exhausted even younger staffers. It was a bad night, they said. Blame was flown to the president’s aides. Democrats on Capitol Hill complain that Biden’s performance had hurt their chances at the ballot box. And critics of the press claimed that reporters had failed to hold the president and his staff accountable.
On Tuesday, the pressure on Biden increased withdraw from the race and a difficult process for Democrats to nominate someone else. The crisis rippled through the Democratic Party just over six weeks before the Chicago convention. It is unclear whether Biden and Trump will debate a second time.
Reagan’s moment in 1984 came 33 minutes in, when Henry Trewhitt of The (Baltimore) Sun said, “You’re already the oldest president in history, and some of your aides say you were tired after your last meeting with Mr. Mondale.” At this, Reagan straightened his feet and suppressed a smile. He was ready.
Trewhitt noted that President John F. Kennedy (the youngest elected US president) barely slept during the Cuban Missile Crisis: “Do you have any doubt that you could function under such circumstances?”
“Not at all, Mr. Trewhitt,” Reagan said. He later declared, “I am the boss.”