FORECASTS & TRENDS E-LETTER
by Gary D. Halbert
September 5, 2023

IN THIS ISSUE:

1. Americans Say Biden Too Old For A Second Term

2. Americans Want Younger Leaders In Washington

3. Should Age Be A Deciding Factor For Candidate?

4. Do I Support “Age Limits” For Political Candidates?

Americans Say Biden Too Old For A Second Term

Americans actually agree on something in this time of widespread political discord: President Joe Biden is too old to be an effective president for a second term.

This is according to a new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research which found much of the public united in sizing up the one trait Biden cannot change: his age (currently 80 years old).

The president has taken to raising the age issue himself, and joking about it, as if trying to relax his audiences about his 80 trips around the sun.

Age discrimination may be banned in the workplace, but the president's employers – the American people – aren't shy about their bias.

In the poll, 77% said Biden is too old to be effective for four more years. Not only do 89% of Republicans say that, so did 69% of Democrats. This view is held across age groups, not just by young people.

In contrast, about half of US adults say former President Donald Trump, 77, is too old for the office, with Democrats far more likely to disqualify Trump by age than are Republicans.

What's clear from the poll is that Americans are saying “out with the old and in with the young,” or at least younger.

Americans Want Younger Leaders In Washington

Democrats, Republicans and Independents want to sweep a broad broom through the halls of power, imposing “AGE LIMITS” on the presidency, Congress and the Supreme Court. In all about two-thirds of US adults back an age ceiling on candidates for president and Congress and a mandatory retirement age for Supreme Court justices.

Specifically, 66% support age ceilings for candidates for president. 68% support age ceilings for candidates for House and Senate, and 67% favor requiring justices to retire by a certain age.

The AP-NORC survey went beyond posing questions and presenting choices on age. It also had a “word association exercise,” asking people to offer the first word or phrase that comes to mind at the mention of each man. This is very interesting.

The answers underscored how age is a particular drag for Biden across party lines, even when people aren't prompted to think about that.

Among those concerned about Biden’s age, 15% of respondents used words such as "slow" or "confused" to describe the president. Even among Democrats, they preferred such terms over "president," "leader," "strong" or "capable." Some, including those who approve of his performance, nevertheless called him "senile."

As the first descriptive word for Donald Trump, only 3% in the survey came up with "confused" and a mere 1% used "old" or the like. Instead, the top words were those like "corrupt" or "crooked" (15%), "bad" and other generally negative terms (11%), words such as "liar" and "dishonest" (8%), along with "good" and other generally positive comments (8%).

Why the divergence between the two on public perceptions of their age?

"Biden just seems to be very compromised by age-related conditions," said Eric Dezenhall, 60, a corporate scandal-management consultant who has followed Trump's career and previously worked in Ronald Reagan's White House. "Even people who like him see him as being frail and not altogether ‘there.'"

"Whatever Trump's negatives are, I don't think most people see them as being related to being disabled in an age-related way," he said.

Alyssa Baggio, 32, is a Democrat-leaning independent in Vancouver, Washington, who works as a recruitment specialist for a homebuilder. She thought Biden was too old for the presidency before he started it. She's even more convinced of it now and says she’ll definitely vote for someone else next year.

"I don't think he's done a terrible job in office," she said of Biden, "but I think that's more because, as opposed to Trump, he surrounds himself with more experienced and logical people."

Older Democrats are less negative than younger ones on Biden's decision to run again. In the poll, only 34% of Democrats under 45 want him running for reelection, compared with 54% of those older.

Still, about three-quarters of younger Democrats say they'll probably support him if he's the nominee, while others did not commit to that.

Should Age Be A Deciding Factor For Candidate?

All of this is dispiriting to S. Jay Olshansky, a public health professor and aging expert at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He thinks age, when sizing up a presidential candidate, is no more relevant than eye color, and the public's focus on it shortchanges the gift of wisdom and experience.

"It's sort of the classic ageism that we've been battling for the last 50 years," he said. "The age of the individual is irrelevant. It's the policies that they bring to the table that are important. And the number of times around the sun [age] just doesn't cut it as an important variable at all."

From observing both men from afar and examining their medical records, Olshansky regards Biden and Trump as likely "super agers."

"Biden is likely to outlive Trump because he has fewer harmful risk factors and he does exercise quite notably, whereas Trump does not," he said. But overall, "they're both functioning at a very high level."

"If you don't like what they say," he added, "it's not because of how old they are. It's because you don't like what they say." Good point.

The poll of 1,165 adults was conducted August 10-14, 2023, using a sample drawn from NORC's probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the US population. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 3.8 percentage points.

Do I Support “Age Limits” For Political Candidates?

Let me start by saying I believe age considerations for candidates running for high political office are very important. Likewise, I believe that some candidates are realistically too old to be in high political offices.

But deciding what qualifies as “too old” is a difficult, if not impossible, task. The biggest problem, as we all know, is the fact that the age when people become too old varies wildly. Some people can become too old (mentally or physically) to hold high political office in their late 60s. Yet others may not be too old until they are in their late 70s or even 80s.

Given this factor alone, I believe it would be impossible (not to mention unfair) to establish a certain age at which someone is too old to hold high political office.

Here's another reason why age limits will not happen. Most of our highest political offices are held by what I’ll call “elders,” which for purposes of today’s commentary I define as “people age 60 and above. Does anyone think the elders are going to vote for age limits for many political offices? I didn’t think so! With elders mostly running the show to contend with, don't expect that to happen any time soon.

Even if age limits were a serious consideration, there is the question of how, legally, we would have to do it. Many believe it would take a constitutional amendment to make age limits the law of the land.

A constitutional amendment may be proposed by a two-thirds vote of both Houses of Congress, or, if two-thirds of the States request one, by a convention called for that purpose. The amendment must then be ratified by three-fourths of the State legislatures – or three-fourths of conventions called in each State for ratification. Either is extremely difficult.

Even so, the latest Associated Press/NORC Center-survey suggests lots of people across political lines are open to seeing a younger face, a fresher one, or both, capture the public imagination. I suspect this younger sentiment to continue to grow in the years just ahead.

As such, it will be increasingly interesting to see how this trend in attitudes plays out in upcoming elections for high political office.

I’ll close with this obvious fact we all know: the 2024 presidential election currently includes two REALLY OLD guys – Joe Biden and Donald Trump (ages 80 and 77, respectively). So, unless something changes, the country will continue to be run by a very old dude for the next five-plus years.

This despite the fact that polls earlier this year clearly indicate a majority of Americans don’t want to vote for either candidate. An NBC News poll earlier this year found that 70% of Americans don’t want Biden to run for re-election – including a majority (51%) of Democrats who agreed (wow!).

Meanwhile, 60% of Americans don’t want Donald Trump to run for a second term in the White House.

I don’t remember another presidential election where so many Americans didn’t want to vote for either candidate – including lots of voters from their own political parties. If it ends up being Biden versus Trump, it could be one of the most interesting elections in years (or not).

Wishing you all the best,

Gary D. Halbert

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