I was reading Jonathan Bernstein’s Substack entry this morning, and one of the things he noted was the discussion of Biden’s age (which also came up in the Open Forum yesterday). I have not read Tapper and Thompson’s book, so it is impossible for me to intelligently comment on it. Given their journalistic pedigrees, my suspicion is that the book is well-researched and reported (indeed, that was my first thought when I heard about the book on NPR a couple of days ago). I suspect that this piece in The Atlantic, An Autopsy Report on Biden’s In-Office Decline, gives a sufficient taste.
But, back to Berstein. He notes the following, which I agree with. I agree that the subject matters, that we can learn from it, and that a debilitated Biden would be preferable to Trump.
I do consider this a worthwhile subject and one that is worth learning more about. Even though Biden on his worst day knew far more about government and public policy than Trump on his best day, and even though…well, all the rest about the current president.
I also agree with this:
That said, I agree with those who say it has basically no bearing on future elections. While presidential candidates need to have answered prepared for all sorts of things, the quality of the “what about Biden?” answer is extremely unlikely to matter. If it’s even asked at all.
Indeed, despite all the fuss and bother about it, most of what the out-party does has little or no bearing on what happens in future elections. Oh, it’s possible that there’s some small effect, and in very close races anything can matter, but mostly the out-party’s performance is a function of how the president’s party is doing. Or, really, how the president’s party is perceived as doing.
That last part is really important (and reflects the fact that Bernstein is a trained political scientist). 2026 and 2028 (like 2024) will be a referendum on the party in power. That will be more important than pretty much anything else.
If we are going to draw lessons about the Biden situation, I would suggest that they are linked to the following. These lessons are less about the 2024 election, or whatever partisan points people think they are scoring,* and more about broader structural realities.
First, the likelihood that the 25th Amendment, specifically section 4, will ever be deployed will require, in my view, something like a coma. It will have to be utter debility, and it will have to be very publicly understood. Otherwise, the incentives will be to find a way to make it work. Those incentives will be partisan, professional, and even personal.
From a partisan point of view, it should never be forgotten that the sitting president is the leader of their party and is a powerful symbol that is difficult to dislodge. The incentives run counter to taking that symbol out of commission, even if the power would remain with the party. Like impeachment and removal, I think that the process is dead letter unless it is truly severe (for example, a stroke that leads to utter unresponsiveness).
From a professional point of view, the incentive is always going to be finding a way to make it work. Unless, again, we are talking about a coma or something similar, the people around the president, who are loyal to the president and whose professional power and prestige are linked to that president, are very likely going to try to rationalize a path forward that keeps the president in office. For that matter, who wants to be the person who suggests invoking section 4 of the 25th Amendment only to be the only one to make that suggestion? Who wants to be the disloyal one? Who wants to be the one to try and blow up years of work that brought them to the Oval Office?
Let’s go to the personal. It is hard for some people to admit when people they love and respect are failing. It is also hard, even when you know it is the right thing to do, to take the keys away from Dad. We are talking about human beings with substantial personal stakes in these discussions. And not everyone in the room is going to see it all the same, and you need a majority of “the principal officers of the executive departments” to pull the trigger. That’s not an easy bar to meet.
So, second, the reality is that mechanisms like section 4 of the 25th Amendment, to be deployed to deal with something like age-related decline, are unlikely to happen. So the real answer is to make broad rules that protect against such eventualities. I will return, again, to my post on age limits for elected office.
If it is known that a given system will, from time to time, have to address difficult circumstances it is better to work out the process in the absence of personal feelings or the emotions of the moment. It is the same basic reason why one should make plans for one’s own old age and potential infirmities, rather than either a) hoping you will be the one who doesn’t have such problems or b) assuming that it will work out at the moment (which is rarely done without some planning).
I would note, for those who think I approach these things from a partisan lens, that I was critical in the post of Dianne Feinstein and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. You want to throw Biden on the list, that works too. The reality is that individuals are often terrible at assessing when it is time to go. And, moreover, if the person needing to make such an assessment is in a position of power, it is hard to make them see their own situation if they are unwilling to do so themselves. Further, dementia tends to make reasoning with a person very difficult.
Some will say it is ageist to suggest age limits, that there are people of advanced age capable of doing these jobs. But just as there may be 30-year-olds capable of being president, and yet we have rules that assume being a bit more seasoned is warranted. The reality is that general rules are needed to deal with potentially bad outcomes in a dispassionate way that doesn’t have to deal with the interests and emotions of the moment. Such rules need to be set outside the scope of specific circumstances.
There is a non-trivial chance that a person who is 80 years of age will suffer from physical and/or cognitive decline in a way that would make being President of the United States difficult. Hoping that some group of people in the moment will be able to stand up to the most powerful person in the world and tell them to hand over the keys is a big ask, and it is one likely to fail, save, again, in the most truly extreme of circumstances.
If you have ever been involved in dealing with an aging parent or grandparent over the consequences of aging, you know it is not easy. If it is hard to get the family to all agree on whether or not Dad should stop driving or even be in an assisted living facility, how much harder would it be to tell the President you serve that he is no longer capable of staying in office?
It seems utterly reasonable to me that we have some sort of maximum age limit for office to avoid the kinds of outcomes under discussion here.
*I would note, too, for those who want to use this as some sort of political cudgel, that Trump fell asleep on camera the other day and was unable to conjure the word “stroller” when speaking to the press the other day (along with any other number of ongoing verbal oddities). Part of why admonitions about what Democrats should have done about Biden feel a bit hollow when Trump does similar seemingly age-related behaviors and is dismissed. The notion of speck and planks in various eyes comes to mind.
