The verdict from the media is in — President Joe Biden put to rest concerns about his age for the time being with a “fiery,” “forceful,” “punchy,” and “vigorous” State of the Union address Thursday.
And yet that verdict shows just how silly the discourse on Biden’s age has gotten in recent weeks.
After special counsel Robert Hur’s report suggested Biden had a “poor memory” last month, commentators began to interpret any verbal flub from Biden as new devastating evidence bound to bolster voters’ concerns that he’s too old for another term — while giving little attention to similar screw-ups from Trump and others.
With the bar for a good performance now set so low, Biden easily cleared it in Thursday’s address. But what actually happened? The president read a lengthy speech from a teleprompter, often loudly, without looking visibly tired or messing up in some blatant way.
It’s a thin justification for a major narrative swing in coverage of the campaign. But it’s happening because so much of the previous commentary on Biden’s age was poorly thought out — focused on trivialities rather than substance and failing to properly separate out what actually matters.
The worries about Biden being too old are about two different things
Many of the attacks on Biden being “too old” are pure political opportunism, particularly when they’re coming from supporters of the barely younger Donald Trump.
But it’s also true that Biden speaks and walks less fluidly than he used to, and that in off-the-cuff speech, he not infrequently forgets things or mixes up names. (Trump also speaks less fluidly, forgets things, and mixes up names.) There is a general sense among a lot of voters that Biden seems too old.
Beyond that, two separate concerns are often conflated in the discourse.
The first concern is a worry that Biden’s age has impaired, or will impair, his decision-making or governance — that his basic mental functioning has…
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