By Steven V. Roberts

When Jon Stewart returned to Comedy Central after an eight-year absence, New York Times TV critic James Poniewozik wrote a review under this headline: “You Might Not Like What Jon Stewart Has to Tell You.”

Poniewozik is totally aware that the audience for both Stewart and the Times tilts leftward, and he directly addressed those liberals this way: “You may have spent years wishing that Stewart would come back to dunk on your antagonists, but he considers himself free — and maybe obligated — to joke about things you wish he wouldn’t.”

At the top of that list of disquieting subjects is Biden’s age. At 81, the president is already four years older than Ronald Reagan was when he retired, and he’d be 86 if he serves a full second term. Politico accurately calls Biden’s age “the most dangerous threat to his reelection,” and in the latest ABC/Ipsos poll, 86% called Biden “too old” to be president (62% said that about the 77-year-old Donald Trump). 

The age issue has received even more scrutiny since special counsel Robert Hur called Biden a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.” When the president tried to rebut Hur, Stewart gave his fumbling performance a scathing review: “Joe Biden had a big press conference to dispel the notion that he may have lost a step and, politically speaking, lost three or four steps.”

A New York Times editorial was equally critical, saying “the president raised more questions about his cognitive sharpness and temperament, as he delivered emotional and snappish retorts in a moment when people were looking for steady, even and capable responses to fair questions about his fitness.”

In our highly polarized political environment, Biden backers see these valid criticisms as a treasonous betrayal. Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger told Reuters that the White House “has been extremely upset” about the paper’s focus on the president’s age. Stewart, too, elicited a backlash, with The Daily Beast accusing the comedian of “using his old platform to tell Americans that their two choices for president are both not that different and equally terrible.”

They are not “equally terrible.” Nikki Haley, Trump’s only surviving rival for the Republican nomination, calls him “unhinged” and not “mentally fit” for the job. “An unhinged president is an unsafe president,” she says. And former GOP lawmaker Liz Cheney calls Trump “uninformed and ignorant and dangerous.” None of those negatives apply to Biden.  

But independent analysts — reporters and editorial writers, columnists and comedians — are “obligated,” in Poniewozik’s word, to be truth-tellers. And the problem of Biden’s age and increasingly feeble public profile, is not going away, no matter how upset the White House gets.

Indeed, two key factors aggravate the problem, and one is the comparison to Trump, who is only four years younger than Biden but comes across as far more fit and vigorous. As Carol Kinsey Goman, an executive coach and expert on public speaking, told the Times: “Trump is big. He simply takes over. He has that kind of full-charge-ahead persona that does correlate with being younger, healthier, more active. Biden doesn’t. He is a different kind of person.”

The other issue is America’s deep-seated preference for youth and energy in its leaders. The average age of all of our presidents on the day they were elected is 56. Before Biden, the last four elected Democrats — John F. Kennedy, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama — averaged 47 years old when they entered the White House. All of them, in their own way, ran on a promise of freshness and vitality — and there is nothing fresh about Joe Biden. 

So what can he do? Politico asked a number of political experts to suggest a strategy for Biden, and Republican John Conway replied: “Everyone knows Joe Biden is old, and there is no getting around it. Instead of trying to fight it, Biden needs to lean into it … and transform his image from an ‘old man’ to a ‘seasoned statesman.'”

Maria Cardona, a Democrat, put it this way: “All of this means taking on the age issue head-on, not shying away from it, showing who he is at his core, which is much more important than a number. … As I heard a focus group voter say recently, ‘Yeah, Biden is old, but so is Donald Trump. I would rather have old and steady than old and crazy!'”

That’s probably the answer. Biden won’t get more eloquent or dynamic before Election Day. But if he can frame the choice facing voters as steady versus chaotic, he can still win.

Steven Roberts teaches politics and journalism at George Washington University. He can be contacted by email at stevecokie@gmail.com.