On Friday, President-elect Joe Biden turned 78. In two months, he will be in charge of the wrecked nation and will face the worst public health crisis in a century, high unemployment, and a visible racial injustice.
Biden will be sworn in as the oldest president in the nation’s history after displacing Ronald Reagan. He left the White House in 1989 when he was 77 years and 349 days old.
Ross Baker, a political scientist at Rutgers University, said, “It’s crucial that Biden and his staff put himself in the position early in his presidency where he can express what he wants with a crispness that not always been his strength. He has got to build credibility with the American people that he’s physically and mentally up to the job.”
Some of Biden’s rivals in the Democratic primary made a case on age by raising the question of whether someone of Biden’s and Trump’s generation was the right person to lead a nation dealing with issues like climate change and racial inequality.
Brain Ott, a Missouri State University communications professor who studies presidential rhetoric, said the president-elect experience a combination of age and nearly 50 years in politics. It conveys more clearly through the prism of governing than the chaos of campaigning.