What Is Lost and Gained with an Elderly President
Our superhuman image of the presidency needs a little updating
July 13, 2024
The fallout since Joe Biden’s disastrous debate performance on June 27 has me thinking a lot about how we understand the presidency and how political scientists like me teach it.
For decades, political scientists have used a teaching tool. We divide the president’s powers into five roles played by the president: (1) chief of state, (2) chief executive, (3) chief diplomat, (4) chief legislator, and (5) commander-in-chief.
Whenever I’ve used that teaching tool in undergraduate courses at three universities for over twenty years, I’ve always given special emphasis to that first role—chief of state. I tell students that the role is strange because there are no powers associated with being chief of state. As chief of state, the president signs proclamations and performs other ceremonial duties because the president represents the whole American people in his person.
For this reason, I tell students, the chief of state role is the least powerful but the most important presidential role. Americans need to be able to accept a person as capable of embodying us in order for that person to succeed as president. We need to believe in a person’s ability to be a strong leader and trust them.
When Gerald Ford tumbled down the stairs of Air Force One, he lost our confidence. It was much the same when it was said a rabbit attacked Jimmy Carter in his fishing boat. The presidency does not bear indignities.
Passing the chief of state test also is important for presidential candidates. Michael Dukakis was weakened by how silly he looked wearing a helmet while he rode in a tank. Howard Dean screamed his front-runner status to an end.
This all is primitive and a little silly, but it is part of the dynamics of leadership. That’s what I’ve told countless students.
For that reason, Joe Biden’s debate performance raised questions. But now as I have watched the furor about replacing him as the nominee, I’ve begun to wonder whether we’ve been thinking about and teaching about the presidency all wrong.
Of course a political leader has to project a strong image. Television and mass media have have made that even more important in recent decades. They also have helped reduce our expectation of presidential leadership to spectacle, a mere performance. We saw this first with John F. Kennedy whose youthful image (concealing debilitating illnesses) bested Richard Nixon in the first televised debate that radio listeners felt Nixon had won on substance. Ronald Reagan, an actor by profession, may have perfected this presidential style. Its inevitable fruition came with Donald Trump, someone whose only expertise is spectacle.
Governing takes a back seat when we think of leadership this way, and our expectations for presidential success seem to depend less on achieving results. Historically speaking, our greatest presidents might never have been successful if they faced this way we think about presidential leadership. Lincoln’s was described as possessing “a thin tenor, or rather falsetto, voice.” Washington’s voice was “high, weak and breathy”: on top of that, his teeth were unsightly. FDR was confined to a wheelchair. None of them projected an image the way we seem to expect today. They simply delivered results.
Joe Biden is old. He too fails to project a perfect image of strength, and there are fair reasons to worry about his age. But maybe this summer is the right time to ask whether we are preoccupied too much by presidential infirmities and imperfections.
Rather than expecting our president to be superhuman, maybe we should not overlook how no president ever has had the more than fifty years’ experience in governing that Joe Biden has. That must account for the successes of the Biden Administration—six major pieces of legislation passed with razor-thin congressional margins, the diplomacy that rallied the world to Ukraine’s aid, reinvigorated NATO, and won a 7-day ceasefire in Gaza.
The trade-off is that a president who is so experienced also will be an elderly person. An 81-year-old will not always deliver well on television or in other settings that demand a performance.
The question for American voters and for political scientists while this campaign proceeds is whether that trade-off is worthwhile. Even more, maybe it is time to re-think how much we value image in our leaders. Age brings experience and wisdom as much as other infirmities teach empathy and compassion. Perhaps we might learn to value those things.
Of course it is important for Americans to be able to repose so much trust in a president that he can function as chief of state. Balancing that fact of leadership against what leadership is for—improving the lives of Americans—is the right place to focus our attention. We could find we are gaining more from age in a leader than we are losing.