Joe Biden has a Jimmy Carter problem

Biden as an octogenarian is the oldest US President in office, and is looking old and frail ahead of the 2024 elections

Age is a funny thing for former President Jimmy Carter. He is only one of five former United States Presidents alive today, along with Bill Clinton, George W Bush, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump.

Come October 1, Carter will hit 100 years old. Carter has outlived two of his successors: Ronald Reagan, the man who beat him in the 1980 presidential elections, and George H W Bush, who passed away at the age of 94 in 2018. Carter may just equal another United States heavyweight, the late Henry Kissinger, who passed away on November 29. Kissinger was 100 years old.

The ‘oldest’

Carter is a silver-haired veteran, and was one of the youngest US presidents to be elected, at 52 years old, when he entered the Oval Office; and left after one term at the age of 56. In 2019, an interviewer quipped about Grover Cleveland serving two non-consecutive terms, and would the option be open for Carter.

Carter took a bold stance and replied that he hoped there would be an age limit instituted at some point and that he couldn't have handled the presidency at 80. Carter’s rationale was if he were just 80 years old, or 15 years younger, he wouldn’t be able to undertake the duties he experienced when he was president. Carter said a president would need to be “very flexible with your mind, and to be able to go from one subject to another and concentrate on each one adequately, and then put them all together in a comprehensive way”.

Joe Biden, the current incumbent, will turn 82 in the election month of November; and, should he win his re-election bid, he would become the oldest sitting US President likely to finish office at 87. Biden’s predecessor — and as some pollsters predict, his successor — Donald Trump previously held that record as he walked through Washington’s most coveted address at the age of 73.

…the last was in 1956

This year seems to be an encore of 2020 in a possible rematch between Biden and Trump. The last time the US presidential system had a rematch was way back in 1956 when incumbent Dwight ‘Ike’ Eisenhower ran against Democrat Adlai Stevenson, whom he beat in 1952 and 1956 in landslide wins.

Furthermore, running multiple times in presidential primary elections is par for the course. Just ask Biden, who ran as a young senator in 1988, then as a veteran senator against his soon-to-be boss Barack Obama in 2008, and then in 2020.

What’s been par for the course is once a candidate wins the primary,  becomes the nominee, and loses the general elections, it’s seen as a political coup-de-grace. More like a one-and-done, with the belief the party lent you their support, now it’s time for a fresh face and new campaign strategy. Just ask Mitt Romney and Hilary Clinton.

Victory and vendetta

Apropos of television, Trump has much to credit the ‘idiot box’ for his fame and rise to business and later political stardom. A maverick, eccentric billionaire, who doesn’t want to change the system but destroy it altogether. As recently reported by the Washington Post, Trump, should he pull off a Grover Cleveland and achieve a second non-consecutive term, has a cudgel, rather many axes, to grind. It’s ‘V’ for victory and vendetta in a Trump 2.0 administration.

In 2020, Trump became the fifth US President in the last 100 years to be a one-term President. An interesting phenomenon about one-term presidents is that four out of the five one-terms — Herbert Hoover, Jimmy Carter, Bush Senior, and Trump — all had a massive crisis to deal with. Hoover had the Great Depression, Bush Senior forgot that ‘it’s the economy, stupid’, and Trump had Covid-19.

Carter may have achieved fame in his adroit diplomacy of the Camp David Accords, but it was West Asia that was his political death knell when the Shah of Iran had to flee during the Iranian revolution. An Ayatollah-led Shia-Muslim government in Tehran singed ties with Washington, leading to US diplomats being held hostages. Tehran and Washington haven’t had formal relations since.

Trump’s advantage

Incumbents are not judged on the origin of the crisis, but they are judged on how well they handle the crisis during their tenure. Biden will not be the only incumbent in the race. After all, it’s one thing for an incumbent to run against a veteran politician, but Trump, albeit not a veteran politician, too is a former president with a mass following.

Biden can’t make the case of experience and silver-haired sagacity, the way Reagan made against his lesser experienced opponent, former Veep Walter Mondale. Reagan, then 73, was asked the tough questions on age and ability to do the job, and turned it around as a mic drop zinger, saying ‘he wouldn’t make age an issue, and exploit his opponent’s youth and inexperience’.

Trump in 2016 was a political unknown; in 2024, we can speculate but we know. So, Biden can’t take out his political punching bag of electing the unknown. Trump, while having the advantage of incumbency in the known entity, also has the advantage of non-incumbency, of not having any active responsibility of battling governing vs campaigning.

Biden’s record

Biden has made revolutionary strides in domestic policy in handling a pandemic and abating the crisis from the rollout of vaccines, and stimulus checks to phasing out the ominous mood that lingered three years ago. The CHIPS and Science Act of 2022 is an impetus to the US domestic manufacturing industry, strengthening supply chains, and competing with China in high-end tech manufacturing. The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) of 2022 worked to bring down the deficit, fight rising inflation, and an incentive to boost domestic energy production and manufacturing.

On the foreign policy front, several tinderboxes could spell one-term presidency. It started with a hasty retreat from Afghanistan, thus ending a two-decade failed war, where Washington replaced the Taliban with the Taliban. Then Russia marched into Ukraine like it was 1939. And of course, the forever quest for peace in West Asia. Trump will brag about bringing Arab states and Israel closer with the Abraham Accords. Biden is caught between supporting US’ forever ally in Israel and failing to stop the humanitarian bloodshed that’s morbidly covering Gazan ground.

Style over substance

Most importantly, Biden’s Jimmy Carter problem is that he looks old, frail, weak, and fragile. The US psyche during polling and voting reveals umbrage towards pusillanimity and pusillanimous foreign policy on the world stage.

Carter left office as one of the only US presidents to have never ordered the firing of a single bullet from the Oval. In the 1980 elections, he was trounced as an incumbent, losing to a charismatic former California Governor, who made his fame on the silver screen. Carter came off meek and weak in the public eye during his handling of the Iran hostage crisis, compared to tough-talking cowboyesque Reagan.

The Biden campaign will thump the domestic credentials and Trump’s poor governance style. But on election day, it’s been well evinced that it’s style over substance, and politics over policy.

(Akshobh Giridharadas is a Washington DC-based public policy professional, and visiting fellow, Observer Research Foundation.)

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.