Sage or Senile? Addressing the Age-Old Old Age Question

Then Vice President Joe Biden, speaking with attendees at the Presidential Gun Sense Forum in Des Moines, Iowa. Photo by Gage Skidmore.

Joe Biden is old. That is not news to anyone. But watching the President’s gaffe-ridden performance in the 2024 presidential debate against Donald Trump in June made that unspoken truth suddenly impossible to ignore. 82-year-old President Biden struggled through his responses, at times trailing off into incoherent non-answers. The reaction from Democrats was one of horror and dismay, as they immediately scrambled to do damage control, fearful of the fallout from Biden’s performance. Post-debate, the political spotlight did not fall on any policy concerns voiced by either candidate nor any aspect of the debate’s content in the slightest. Instead, all eyes were on the issue of aging, sparking intense discussions on presidential leadership, age limits, and cognitive health. 

Just months ago, President Biden’s age dominated coverage of the 2024 presidential election. But after his withdrawal from the race, that line of discourse all but dissipated entirely. This would seem logical—if Biden’s age was a concern, his stepping down would presumably have addressed it. Yet as Biden faded from the political spotlight, Trump, who is a mere three years Biden’s junior, continued his campaign undeterred. The pervasiveness of aging politicians isn’t new, but the media’s shifting portrayal of Biden—from the “steady hand” in 2020 to a catalyst for debates about age limits in 2024—serves as a perfect microcosm of a long-standing issue: a reductive and reactionary media cycle that distorts how we discuss age in leadership.

Of course, President Biden is far from the only—let alone the first—elderly politician to grace the headlines. Prior to Biden’s controversy, political figures like Senators Mitch McConnell and Dianne Feinstein faced criticism about age and cognitive health. But even so, no age-related backlash has matched the scale and intensity of the post-debate discourse on Biden, which resonated not just with his opponents but also within his own party. Democrats eventually adopted critical slogans like “It’s Joe-ver,” while top figures behind the scenes reportedly urged Biden to “pass the torch.” The media amplified this furor, playing a “will he or won’t he” game over whether Biden would drop out, turning speculation into spectacle. 

After establishing Biden's aging as a salient issue, political pundits quickly steered the post-debate conversation toward possible solutions. A 2023 Pew Research Center report found that 79% of Americans support maximum age limits for federally elected officials, coinciding with growing calls for a constitutional amendment to impose an upper age limit for the presidency. Others, such as CNN’s Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta, called upon President Biden to undergo cognitive and neurological testing. Expanding on Dr. Gupta’s claim, former White House physician Dr. Jeffrey Kuhlman argued that all presidential candidates should be required to undergo comprehensive neurocognitive exams both before taking office and periodically thereafter. 

On the surface, age limits and periodic neurological testing seem like reasonable fixes—but only on the surface. Not only would an age limit amendment be difficult to pass, but people age at different rates, making a quantitative limit arbitrary at best and ageist at worst. Cognitive tests also raise ethical issues: who could administer them impartially, and what standards would be appropriate for such a high-stakes job? Even more concerning than the potential ineffectiveness of these solutions, however, is the media’s reductionist framing of the issue. By focusing solely on remedial measures like age limits and cognitive tests, the media has narrowed the issue of aging in politics to a mere problem-solution narrative. But aging is simply not something that can be solved; it’s an inherent part of human existence. While concerns about someone being “too old” to be president are entirely reasonable, this simplistic framework overshadows a larger, more troubling trend: the media itself has been a troubling and unreliable actor in the conversation about aging in political leadership.

This is made all too evident by the jarring speed with which the media moved on from the “age conversation” after Biden withdrew from the 2024 presidential race. Almost immediately, the entire age debate largely fell to the wayside, lingering only in the form of articles questioning the age-related mental acuity of former President Trump. At 78, some framed him as outdated compared with the more contemporary image of Biden’s successor, 60-year-old Vice President Kamala Harris. While there might have been genuine concern about Trump’s age, any meaningful conversation about aging was lost in a political climate where the problematization of Trump’s age just replaced that of Biden’s—with a Harris presidency positioned as the solution. Except Harris didn’t win. Mere months after an 82-year-old candidate dropped out of the race for being “too old,” a 78-year-old candidate trounced a 60-year-old. While other factors certainly played a role, the fact that Biden’s withdrawal hinged on his age makes this heel-turn all the more striking. Evidently, the age debate is anything but straightforward; instead, it's riddled with contradictions and far messier than a problem-solution narrative. 

The media's paradoxical stance on aging complicates the issue: while it condemns the gerontocracy (as made extremely clear during the Biden age debacle), it simultaneously tends to idealize certain older men for their wisdom and authority. Thinking back to the 2008 presidential election, a 66-year-old Biden was considered an asset to Obama's campaign, with pundits highlighting how Biden “add[ed] a few years and gray hair to a ticket that otherwise might seem a bit young.” Despite cautionary tales from the Biden years, the media's generations-long narrative of venerating older candidates for their age-based wisdom has all but faded. In 2024, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, the running mate of Vice President Harris, was praised online for his “big dad energy.” Whether it’s “gray hair” or “dad energy,” the media has and continues to maintain a narrative that venerates age-related qualities—up to a certain point. In meritlessly praising older men, the media overlooks the harsh reality that age, no matter how wisely framed, carries significant risks. In the context of vice presidents, who often use the position as a pipeline to the presidency, this veneration paves the way for candidates in their 60s to ascend to power and potentially remain there for over a decade—no questions asked.

The U.S.’s blind idealization of older leaders supports a cultural tenet of aging, which medical ethicists Thomas Cole and Benjamin Saxton have termed the “Wise Old Man” narrative. This narrative downplays many of the realities of aging by attributing greater wisdom and morality to older men. This indiscriminate valorizing of older politicians for their “dad-ness,” or even “granddad-ness” for older figures like Biden, perpetuates the notion that older male candidates inherently possess the knowledge and experience for effective leadership. The age issue is complicated even further when we consider that old age isn’t just venerated forever. We praise the “Wise Old Man,” but when does this archetype become a liability? And is there any rhyme or reason to this invisible threshold between the two?

This tension defines our regnant understanding of aging. Buoyed by contemporary media, age is rooted in an impossibly arbitrary binary of “good old” versus “bad old.” The threshold between these categories is unclear and dangerously subjective—does a leader become “bad old” after a specific number of gaffes, or only when those missteps violate some unspoken rule? Is there a certain age that signifies one has crossed that invisible line? How is this even decided, and by whom? What is clear, however, is that this framework is far from impartial. For instance, while older men are granted the dignity of the “Wise Old Man” archetype, older women are often cast as “witches,” “crones,” or worse. This reductive framing doesn’t just discount the complexities of aging—it also perpetuates cultural and gendered stereotypes.

Intuitively, we know that aging isn’t a sudden switch from “good” to “bad.” Yet, the media insists on presenting it as such—celebrating age for its gravitas and experience up until an intangible threshold is crossed and it becomes problematic. This is precisely the trap Biden fell into: the “steady hand,” previously lauded for his maturity and stability, was reframed in 2024 as a leader completely out of step with the moment. Building up a 78-year-old Biden in 2020 didn’t just invite concerns that would inevitably surface by 2024—it practically ensured them. This cycle is self-sustaining and self-evident. The media exploits our cultural narratives around aging by feeding our desire to valorize age as a symbol of wisdom and perspective. Yet, it eagerly tears these aging figures down the moment the hard truths of age inevitably come to light as if the media didn’t elevate them in the first place. 

Politicians will always weaponize age—touting it as a signifier of wisdom in their allies and weakness in their opponents. That’s not going anywhere. But the media is also influential in shaping how we talk about aging, and it has a responsibility to foster a better conversation. A balanced media approach wouldn’t mean abandoning admiration for candidates’ “dadness” or ignoring the value of experience in times of crisis. Rather, it would mean pairing these venerations with honest considerations of the dynamic realities of aging, instead of waiting until the impacts of age become impossible to overlook. Even merely addressing tropes like the “Wise Old Man” and who it elevates would provide an initial shift away from facile problem-solving or blind age idealization.

While the Biden era may be drawing to a close, our conversation about aging in politics can’t end here. Biden’s age-related controversy wasn’t an anomaly—it was the product of a media machine that thrives on shallow, reductive narratives. In a political climate as fractured as ours, there is but one clear expectation nearly all Americans share: they want competent leaders, not aging figureheads propped up by comforting narratives. If the media refuses to confront its own role in problematizing and venerating aging, it will only deepen public disillusionment. And now, with Trump recently re-elected for a nonconsecutive second term, the nation is poised for its oldest president ever. Trump’s second term will undoubtedly bring its own questions about aging in leadership, but Biden’s tenure has already revealed a troubling pattern: the media’s paradoxical framing of aging in politics doesn’t just spark shallow debates over age limits and cognitive testing, it cements a reductive binary, casting older leaders as either “venerable” or “incompetent.” Without rethinking how we frame aging, these cycles will repeat, and meaningful discussions about leadership in later life will continue to elude the political discourse. American politicians are old, and they’re only getting older. We can’t afford to let these stagnant narratives age alongside them.

Sophie Kamdar (GS ’26) is a staff writer at CPR and a student in the dual degree program with Trinity College Dublin. She is studying neuroscience and visual arts, with a particular interest in political psychology and US social issues.