Joe Biden quits election race after falling on ageing sword

America is no stranger to extremely old and visibly ailing politicians, but the White House is being criticised for covering up Joe Biden’s deteriorating state for far too long.

Joe Biden’s decision to drop out of the US presidential race just 107 days before the election has prompted criticism that White House staff and his family covered up for an ailing man for far too long.

Critics accused the White House staff of effectively gaslighting the country over Biden’s true abilities over the past few years, while conservative commentator Jesse Watters told viewers in August last year that “it’s not a conspiracy theory that [Biden] is not in charge”.

White House observers said Biden’s staff had cut important meetings and public appearances, scripted many of his exchanges and dramatically limited press contact.

The New York Times had reported that Biden’s staff had worked around the 81 year old’s need for an afternoon nap, while Axios said the president’s working hours had been cut to just six – between 10am and 4pm – as that was when he was “dependably engaged”.

When it was revealed that a Parkinson’s specialist had visited the White House eight times, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre was confronted with a barrage of questions over the administration’s lack of transparency.

“Has the president been treated for Parkinson’s?” Ms Jean-Pierre said at the time. “No. Is he being treated for Parkinson’s? No.”

White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre. Picture: Jim Watson/AFP

The Daily Mail quoted an unnamed former White House official who claimed the incessant “gatekeeping” did Biden no favours in the long run.

“It was the war that they waged [against the press], it was the access that they limited, it was the opportunities that they turned down, it was the gatekeeping and hiding him from authentic interaction – all those things that were calculated by his team led to his downfall,” the site quoted the source as saying.

A PARLIAMENT OF GERIATRICS

American politics is dominated by the very old.

In the current Congress, the 118th, 43 per cent of the representatives in the lower house are aged 60 or above. Eleven are over 80.

And of the 100 people who sit in the US Senate, 67 of them are 60 or older.

It is a parliament full of geriatrics – with all that that word entails.

US President Joe Biden, age 81, greets supporters and volunteers during a visit to the Roxborough Democratic Coordinated Campaign Office in Philadelphia. Picture: AFP

US President Joe Biden has had his mental competency questioned many times before his decision to withdraws from the race, but he is far from being an outlier, with signs of decrepitude commonly observed among senior American politicians.

Donald Trump has had his own senior moments, bizarrely confusing Nikki Haley and Nancy Pelosi in a speech back in January.

Pelosi, who is former speaker of the United States House of Representatives, retired as House Speaker at the age of 82.

Former U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was 82 when she left her post. Picture: Getty Images via AFP

The former Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who is 82, has frozen twice in front of cameras, seemingly enduring some sort of medical episode. And the 90 year old Democrat Dianne Feinstein has looked visibly confused on the floor of the Senate itself.

(Feinstein died in office at the age of 90 as the oldest sitting U.S. senator and member of Congress.)

And it doesn’t stop there. Republican Strom Thurmond and Democrat Robert Byrd held Senate seats for decades, the former retiring at the age of 100 and the latter at a comparatively junior 92.

US Senator Dianne Feinstein died on the job, aged 90. Picture: AFP

Reports of their advanced mental deterioration were rife in the final years of their terms, and yet they were unchallenged by their parties.

It seems to contrast sharply with the Australian experience. Currently, our oldest federal MP is Bob Katter, who is 79, but the average age of our federal politicians is 51. Our oldest ever Prime Minister was Robert Menzies, who was just 71 at the end of his time in office, while John Howard was 68 when he was voted out. Even our Governor-Generals have been youngish; the oldest was Sir Isaac Isaacs, who was 80 when his five-year term expired in 1936.

Australian politics has been renowned for decades for the brutal though effective ways it disposes of those at the very top of the system, but why is advanced seniority such a marked characteristic of the US system of government?

Australia’s oldest leader was Sir Robert Gordon Menzies, who left office at 71 years old. Picture: Camera Press

Dr Jared Mondschein, research director at the US Studies Centre at Sydney University, says it has something to do with who gets to pick the politicians.

“In Australian democracy, I sincerely doubt we’d see Joe Biden and Donald Trump at the top of the ticket, but it’s because the parties don’t necessarily decide who their candidates are as much as the voters do. In many ways the US system is more democratic, because you don’t have the elites [picking candidates]. You don’t have preselection happening in the US,” he says.

And if those politicians are “known quantities” who are perceived as doing a good job, Dr Mondschein says, they usually go unchallenged, building broader support networks over the course of their careers, with fundraising pockets that just get deeper.

While term limits and mental competency tests for senior politicians get discussed from time to time in the US (former Republican presidential hopeful Nikki Haley proposed both last year), Dr Mondschein says there appears to be little real appetite for reform.

Even when the health issue looks serious – as it did with Mitch McConnell – the public response can be predicated on the person’s position, he suggests.

U.S. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. Picture: Getty Images via AFP

“Mitch McConnell doesn’t hold an executive office, it’s a legislative office. His skill set is in backroom deals and getting his party over the line on certain issues. It is not deciding critical national security issues. That’s why the performance of Joe Biden was more worrying for Americans than Mitch McConnell,” he says.

Concerns about leadership and extreme age are also frequently expressed with regards to America’s federal courts, including the Supreme Court, as judges there are appointed for life.

The deaths of serving justices Antonin Scalia in 2016, aged 79, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg in 2020, aged 87, revived calls for mandatory term limits for people in these positions.

US Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in 2018 at the age of 85. Picture: AFP

Again, the situation in Australia is quite different: thanks to a successful referendum in 1977, the retirement age for Federal and High Court judges is set at 70.

But before we pop the champagne and toast yet another failsafe measure in Australia’s protective system of checks and balances, it should be remembered that there is a counterargument to such a young retirement age – the idea that perhaps we lose out on judicial talent too soon.

“Particularly with modern medicine and lifestyle, it’s very easy for people to live into their 80s and 90s and to be very mentally sharp,” says Elisa Arcioni, an Associate Professor in Law at Sydney University.

There will never be a unanimous view on what an ideal retirement age for a judge should be, she says, noting that each Australian state and territory has set its own age limit.

But unlike America, where judges with particularly strong views can influence the court for long periods of time, the mandatory retirement age does provide “a more regular reinvigoration of the courts,” she says.