Right this moment is Joe Biden’s eightieth birthday. Our first octogenarian president is 2 years older than Ronald Reagan was when his presidency resulted in 1989.
Biden continues to be match and energetic, however he’s additionally exhibiting his age. His hair is thinner, his gait stiffer, his speech a bit extra garbled than when he arrived within the White Home nearly two years in the past.
One factor hasn’t modified: He’s famously cussed.
And now that he’s 80, it’s in all probability honest to explain him as a cussed previous man.
Ask anybody who’s labored for Biden, and also you’ll hear a model of the identical description: He listens to dissenting voices, however as soon as he’s made up his thoughts, he’s nearly unshakable.
“One factor I realized shortly,” a former aide advised me, “you don’t inform Joe Biden what to say.”
When he is mistaken, that stubbornness could also be his worst vice. When he’s proper, it might be his most helpful advantage.
Biden’s stubbornness has helped steer his presidency into a few of its deepest potholes.
It produced the debacle of the U.S. withdrawal from Kabul, when Biden dismissed pleas from the army for delay. (Requested later if he thought he had made errors in Afghanistan, he stated: “No.”)
It shook public confidence when he prematurely declared victory over the COVID-19 pandemic, at the same time as federal consultants warned that the illness was nonetheless spreading.
This yr, it drove his recognition down when he disregarded warnings of rising inflation and caught to an financial message — “issues are higher than you suppose” — that appeared disconnected from voters’ lives.
However there’s additionally a type of stubbornness that’s helpful — a trait extra typically known as persistence or tenacity. The president has that, too.
His persistent assist for Ukraine because it battles a Russian invasion has made him the undisputed chief of a reinvigorated North Atlantic Treaty Group.
This fall, Biden determined an important subject within the midterm elections was democracy — the protection of constitutional norms in opposition to the extremism of “ultra-MAGA Republicans.”
“What we’re doing now’s going to find out whether or not democracy will lengthy endure,” he stated in one in all a number of marketing campaign speeches.
Pundits and political strategists criticized the message, arguing that the election could be selected financial points, not abstractions about democracy.
However when the returns got here in, Biden turned out to be extra proper than mistaken. An Related Press ballot discovered that democracy ranked a detailed second to inflation amongst voters’ issues. A surprisingly excessive proportion of voters sad in regards to the economic system voted for Democrats nonetheless, enabling them to retain management of the Senate and lose fewer seats than anticipated within the Home.
At a postelection information convention, the president was requested whether or not he noticed any want to regulate his course primarily based on the teachings of his first two years.
“I’m not going to vary,” he stated.
Biden’s midterm marketing campaign theme, unsurprisingly, was an up to date model of the message of his 2020 presidential marketing campaign: a pitch for constitutional norms, a rejection of Donald Trump’s extremism.
In that marketing campaign, candidate Biden gained the Democratic nomination by way of sheer stubbornness, too. He completed fourth in Iowa and a disastrous fifth in New Hampshire, however caught with a technique that relied on successful Black voters in South Carolina and outlasting his rivals.
Lengthy earlier than 2020, persistence within the face of adversity was the core of Biden’s story. His nationwide political profession started in tragedy when his spouse and daughter have been killed in a site visitors accident shortly earlier than his swearing-in as a senator. He endured two mind aneurysms. He misplaced his first two makes an attempt to win the Democratic presidential nomination — badly — however got here again for a 3rd attempt.
Now, originally of one other presidential marketing campaign, Biden’s stubbornness has surfaced once more: Will he run for reelection in 2024 at practically 82?
The president has stated repeatedly that he intends to run, and it seems he meant all of it alongside.
“Our intention is to run once more,” he stated after the midterm returns have been in. “That’s been our intention no matter what the result of this election was.”
Folks round him say the midterm outcomes plus Trump’s entry into the race merely confirmed a choice Biden had already made.
Nothing makes him extra defiant than critics saying he’s misplaced his stuff; nothing makes him extra keen than one other likelihood to defeat Trump.
“He seems like he’s the one one who’s crushed [Trump] earlier than,” his former Press Secretary Jen Psaki stated on MSNBC.
Requested whether or not polling that reveals most voters don’t need him to run will have an effect on his considering, Biden stated: “It doesn’t.”
In a CNN exit ballot on election day, 67% of voters stated they didn’t need Biden to run once more. However amongst Democratic voters — those who will resolve on the celebration’s nominee — 57% stated they needed Biden to run; 38% stated they didn’t. That implies the president begins the race as a transparent favourite.
As for his age, Biden stated not too long ago, “It’s a authentic factor to be involved about.”
“I feel one of the best ways to make the judgment is to look at me. Am I slowing up?” he stated. “That’s not how I really feel.”
Is that stubbornness, the vice that may result in catastrophe? Or is it tenacity, the advantage that results in hard-earned success?
Don’t ask Biden; he’s not one of the best decide. All he is aware of is that stubbornness — OK, tenacity — has labored for him to date.