The age question for presidential candidates is more than four decades old. President Ronald Reagan answered it with a pledge to resign if he became impaired, and later with a clever joke that reset his campaign from a stumbling debate performance to a 49-state landslide and a second term.
"I will not make age an issue of this campaign," Reagan said to the question he knew was coming in perhaps the most famous mic-drop moment in campaign history. "I am not going to exploit for political purposes my opponent's youth and inexperience."
The audience roared, even Democratic Vice President Walter Mondale laughed — and Reagan's reelection was back on track.
Today, Democratic President Joe Biden, 81, is struggling for such a redemptive moment after a disastrous debate performance against Republican former president Donald Trump, 78. Those 90 minutes last week set off alarms among Democrats hoping Biden would keep Trump from returning to the White House — and heightened concern among voters long skeptical of how either elderly man would govern a complex nation of more than 330 million people for four more years.
More than two dozen people who have spent time with the president privately described him as often sharp and focused. But he also has moments, particularly later in the evening, when his thoughts seem jumbled and he trails off mid-sentence or seems confused, they said. Sometimes he doesn’t grasp the finer points of policy details. He occasionally forgets people’s names, stares blankly and moves slowly around the room, they said.
Biden has vowed to stay in the race, despite signs of eroding support on Capitol Hill.
"I am running … no one’s pushing me out,” Biden said on a call Wednesday with staffers from his reelection campaign. “I’m not leaving. I’m in this race to the end and we’re going to win.”
But the question facing him is far more intimate, according to one expert who covered Reagan's health during his presidency.
“The most important debate of the campaign is the one taking place right now in Joe Biden’s head between the part of mind telling him he’s the chosen one, and the more self-aware part,” said Rich Jaroslavsky of the University of California Berkeley, formerly of the Wall Street Journal.
At its heart, the question — how old is too old to be president? — is about competence. And Americans have never had wider personal experience with the effects of aging than they do today.
A surge of retiring baby boomers means that millions more Americans know when they see someone declining. For many, this widespread experience made Biden’s halting performance during Thursday’s debate a familiar reality check.
Trump seemed more vigorous, even though he lied about or misstated a long list of facts. When he challenged Biden to a cognitive test, Trump flubbed the name of the doctor who had administered his. For now, he's ceding the spotlight.
“Is this an episode, or is this a condition?” Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., 84, wondered on MSNBC, reflecting the question dominating Democratic circles this week. "It’s legitimate — of both candidates.”
Reagan faced the same questions even before he was elected as the oldest president to that point. In 1980, at 69, he pledged to resign if he sensed serious cognitive decline while in office.
“If I were president and had any feeling at all that my capabilities had been reduced before a second term came, I would walk away,” he told the New York Times on June 10, 1980. "By the same token, I would step down also.”
That didn't happen. Reagan served two full terms, leaving office in 1989. He announced in 1994 that he had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. He died in 2004.
Neither Trump nor Biden has made a similar pledge, and their campaigns did not respond to requests for comment Wednesday.
For Reagan, the age issue faded in his first term as any health questions focused on his recovery from a nearly fatal assassination attempt in 1981. He seemed headed for an easy reelection. And debates seemed natural settings for the smooth-talking former Hollywood actor. But his performance in the first showdown with Mondale in the 1984 campaign brought the age issue roaring back.
The president, then 73, rambled and hesitated. He seemed to lose his train of thought at one point, and appeared tired at others. No one had seen him perform publicly in such a way, recalled Jaroslovsky, who co-authored a story headlined: “New Question in Race: Is Oldest U.S. President Now Showing His Age?”
Reagan's age — really, his fitness for a second term — was now indelibly part of the 1984 race, a striking parallel to what is happening in 2024 in the aftermath of Biden's shaky debate performance. But there are key differences.
Reagan was leading going into the first debate, while Biden and Trump were virtually tied. Onstage, "Biden was terrible out of the gate,” said Jaroslovsky, the founder of the Online News Association.
Then, as now, Jaroslovsky said, the embattled president's supporters provided vigorous spin.
Reagan's operation said he had been tired. There was sniping about the staff overpreparing him, Jaroslovsky said. Biden's team cited fatigue from two overseas trips that had exhausted even younger staffers. It was a bad night, they said. Blame flew at the president's aides. Democrats on Capitol Hill griped that Biden's performance had damaged their chances at the polls. And press critics asserted that reporters had failed to hold the president and his staff to account.
By Tuesday, pressure was building on Biden to withdraw from the race and open a difficult process for Democrats to nominate someone else. The crisis rippled across the Democratic Party just over six weeks before its convention in Chicago. It's not clear that Biden and Trump will debate a second time.
Reagan's moment in 1984 came during the second debate at the 33 minute-mark, when The (Baltimore) Sun's Henry Trewhitt said: “You already are the oldest president in history, and some of your staff say you were tired after your most recent encounter with Mr. Mondale." Here, Reagan squared his feet and suppressed a smile. He was ready.
Trewhitt noted that President John F. Kennedy (the youngest American elected president) got hardly any sleep during the Cuban Missile Crisis: “Is there any doubt in your mind that you would be able to function in such circumstances?”
“Not at all, Mr. Trewhitt," Reagan said. Later, he declared, “I am in charge.”
This story corrects Trump’s age to 78 throughout.
FILE - President Ronald Reagan sits in the Oval Office after he delivered his farewell address to the nation Jan. 11, 1989, from the Oval Office of the White House in Washington. The age question for presidential candidates is more than four decades old. (AP Photo/Ron Edmonds, File)
FILE - Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump speaks during a presidential debate hosted by CNN with President Joe Biden, June 27, 2024, in Atlanta. The age question for presidential candidates is more than four decades old. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert, File)
FILE - President Joe Biden speaks during a presidential debate with Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump, June 27, 2024, in Atlanta. The age question for presidential candidates is more than four decades old. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)
FILE - President Ronald Reagan, left, and his Democratic challenger Walter Mondale, shake hands before debating in Kansas City, Mo., Oct. 22, 1984. The age question for presidential candidates is more than four decades old. (AP Photo/Ron Edmonds, File)
LONDON (AP) — British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said Saturday that he is scrapping a controversial Conservative policy to deport asylum-seekers to Rwanda as he vowed to deliver on voters' mandate for change, though he warned it will not happen quickly.
“The Rwanda scheme was dead and buried before it started,” Starmer said in his first news conference. “It’s never acted as a deterrent. Almost the opposite.”
Starmer told reporters in a wood-paneled room at 10 Downing St. that he was “restless for change,” but would not commit to how soon Britons would feel improvements in their standards of living or public services. His Labour Party delivered the biggest blow to the Conservatives in their two-century history Friday in a landslide victory on a platform of change.
The 30-minute question-and-answer session followed his first Cabinet meeting as the his new government takes on the massive challenge of fixing a heap of domestic woes and winning over a public weary from years of austerity, political chaos and a battered economy.
“We have a huge amount of work to do, so now we get on with our work,” Starmer said as he welcomed the new ministers around the table at 10 Downing St. He said it had been the honor of his life to be asked by King Charles III to form a government in a ceremony that officially elevated him to prime minister.
Among a raft of problems they face are boosting a sluggish economy, fixing a broken health care system, and restoring trust in government.
“Just because Labour won a big landslide doesn’t mean all the problems that the Conservative government has faced has gone away,” said Tim Bale, professor of politics at Queen Mary University of London.
In his first remarks as prime minister Friday after the "kissing of hands” ceremony with Charles at Buckingham Palace, Starmer said he would get to work immediately, though he cautioned it would take some time to show results.,
“Changing a country is not like flicking a switch,” he said as enthusiastic supporters cheered him outside his new official residence at 10 Downing. “This will take a while. But have no doubt that the work of change begins — immediately.”
He will have a busy schedule following the six-week campaign, heading out Sunday to visit each of the four nations of the U.K. — England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland -- that he said had each voted in favor of Labour.
He will then travel to Washington for a NATO meeting Tuesday and will host the European Political Community summit July 18, the day after the state opening of Parliament and the King's Speech, which sets out the new government's agenda.
Starmer singled out several of the big items Friday, such as fixing the revered but hobbled National Health Service and securing its borders, a reference to a larger global problem of absorbing an influx of migrants fleeing war, poverty as well as drought, heat waves and floods attributed to climate change.
Conservatives struggled to stem the flow of migrants arriving across the English Channel, failing to live up to ex-Prime Minister’s Rishi Sunak’s pledge to “stop the boats” that led to the controversial Rwanda plan.
Starmer’s decision on what he called the Rwanda “gimmick” was widely expected because he had said he wouldn’t follow through with the plan that has cost hundreds of millions of dollars and never taken flight.
It's unclear what Starmer will do differently to tackle the same crisis with a record number of people coming ashore in the first six months of this year.
“Labour is going to need to find a solution to the small boats coming across the channel,” Bale said. “It’s going to have to come up with other solutions to deal with that particular problem.”
Suella Braverman, a Conservative hard liner on immigration who is a possible contender to replace Sunak as party leader, criticized Starmer's plan to end the Rwanda pact.
“Years of hard work, acts of Parliament, millions of pounds been spent on a scheme which had it been delivered properly would have worked," she said Saturday. "There are big problems on the horizon which will be I’m afraid caused by Keir Starmer.”
Starmer's Cabinet is also getting to work.
Foreign Secretary David Lammy was to begin his first international trip Saturday to meet counterparts in Germany, Poland and Sweden to reinforce the importance of their relationship.
Health Secretary Wes Streeting said he would open new negotiations next week with NHS doctors at the start of their career who have staged a series of multi-day strikes. The pay dispute has exacerbated the long wait for appointments that have become a hallmark of the NHS's problems.
Britain's Transport Secretary Louise Haigh leaves 10 Downing Street, London, Saturday July 6, 2024, after taking part in Prime Minister Keir Starmer's first Cabinet meeting following the General Election victory for the Labour Party. (Tejas Sandhu/PA via AP)
Britain's Energy Secretary Ed Miliband leaves 10 Downing Street, London, Saturday July 6, 2024, after taking part in Prime Minister Keir Starmer's first Cabinet meeting following the General Election victory for the Labour Party. (Tejas Sandhu/PA via AP)
Britain's Home Secretary Yvette Cooper leaves 10 Downing Street, London, Saturday July 6, 2024, after taking part in Prime Minister Keir Starmer's first Cabinet meeting following the General Election victory for the Labour Party. (Tejas Sandhu/PA via AP)
Britain's Environment Secretary Steve Reed and Leader of the House of Lords Baroness Smith leave 10 Downing Street, London, Saturday July 6, 2024, after taking part in Prime Minister Keir Starmer's first Cabinet meeting following the General Election victory for the Labour Party. (Tejas Sandhu/PA via AP)
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer delivers a speech, following his first cabinet meeting as Prime Minister, in London, Saturday, July 6, 2024. Britain’s new Prime Minister Keir Starmer has appointed a Cabinet of Labour Party lawmakers and a few outside experts as he tries to tackle priorities including boosting a sluggish economy, building more homes and fixing the creaking state-funded health service.(Claudia Greco, Pool Photo via AP)
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer delivers a speech, following his first cabinet meeting as Prime Minister, in London, Saturday, July 6, 2024. Britain’s new Prime Minister Keir Starmer has appointed a Cabinet of Labour Party lawmakers and a few outside experts as he tries to tackle priorities including boosting a sluggish economy, building more homes and fixing the creaking state-funded health service.(Claudia Greco, Pool Photo via AP)
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer delivers a speech, following his first cabinet meeting as Prime Minister, in London, Saturday, July 6, 2024. Britain’s new Prime Minister Keir Starmer has appointed a Cabinet of Labour Party lawmakers and a few outside experts as he tries to tackle priorities including boosting a sluggish economy, building more homes and fixing the creaking state-funded health service.(Claudia Greco, Pool Photo via AP)
Britain's Science Secretary Peter Kyle, left, and Health Secretary Wes Streeting leave 10 Downing Street, London, Saturday July 6, 2024, after taking part in Prime Minister Keir Starmer's first Cabinet meeting following the General Election victory for the Labour Party. (Tejas Sandhu/PA via AP)
Britain's Welsh Secretary Jo Stevens, left, Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood, center, and Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson leave 10 Downing Street, London, Saturday July 6, 2024, after taking part in Prime Minister Keir Starmer's first Cabinet meeting following the General Election victory for the Labour Party. (Tejas Sandhu/PA via AP)
Britain's Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy leaves 10 Downing Street, London, Saturday July 6, 2024, after taking part in Prime Minister Keir Starmer's first Cabinet meeting following the General Election victory for the Labour Party. (Tejas Sandhu/PA via AP)
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer delivers a speech, following his first cabinet meeting as Prime Minister, in London, Saturday, July 6, 2024. Britain’s new Prime Minister Keir Starmer has appointed a Cabinet of Labour Party lawmakers and a few outside experts as he tries to tackle priorities including boosting a sluggish economy, building more homes and fixing the creaking state-funded health service.(Claudia Greco, Pool Photo via AP)
FILE - Labour Party leader Keir Starmer smiles as he speaks to his supporters at the Tate Modern in London, Friday, July 5, 2024. After a few hours of sleep to shake off a night of celebration and an audience with the king, Keir Starmer will step through the front door of 10 Downing St. for the first time as prime minister on Friday. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung, File)
Britain's Prime Minister Keir Starmer outside 10 Downing Street in London, Friday, July 5, 2024 after returning from seeing King Charles III where he was asked to form a government. Starmer's Labour Party swept to power Friday after more than a decade in opposition, as a jaded electorate handed the party a landslide victory — but also a mammoth task of reinvigorating a stagnant economy and dispirited nation. (AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda)
