If you thought the news media had learned anything from its absurd coverage of Hillary Clinton’s emails in 2016, think again. President Joe Biden’s age is shaping up to serve almost exactly the same purpose. What began with legitimate questions is trending toward obsession, an easy way for reporters to show how “objective” they are by burying the Democratic candidate in an avalanche of negative coverage. And like 2016, this farcical framing threatens to blot out far more important criteria on which voters might base their decisions.
There is almost nothing political reporters can’t turn into a story about Biden’s age. When his campaign rolled out a new wave of TV ads and public appearances, The New York Times described the initiative this way: “As Democratic Jitters Grow, Biden Campaign Tries to Showcase His Vigor.” The paper’s story Monday on Biden’s recent trip to Asia — which even Fox News described as an “all-nighter” — was nevertheless titled, “‘It Is Evening, Isn’t It?’ An 80-Year-Old President’s Whirlwind Trip.” The next day, The Wall Street Journal ran a story headlined, “Is Biden Too Old to Run Again? We Asked People Born on His Exact Birthday.” If he shows signs of aging, it makes the front page; if he doesn’t, it’s the occasion for a discussion of how he and his advisers are working to defuse the issue.
If we’re going to ask the question, we ought to answer it, too, rather than asking the question over and over again.
It’s perfectly fine to ask how age is affecting Biden; he’s already the oldest president, and he’ll be older still in a second term. But if we’re going to ask the question, we ought to answer it, too, rather than asking the question over and over again. And we should be honest about what that answer is. That’s where the coverage is already falling short.
We’ve seen little to indicate that Biden is suffering any real cognitive decline. This is an important point that stories about the president’s age rarely mention. Neither in his public appearances nor in any behind-the-scenes reporting have we learned that he’s forgetting important information, falling asleep in meetings, becoming confused, or growing erratic in his decision-making.
Biden does sound quite old in his speech; while he always had a tendency to ramble and pepper his comments with non sequiturs and sometimes mangled aphorisms, he certainly sounds older now than he used to. Yet sounding old is not the same as thinking old. Being a smooth and compelling public speaker is a part of the president’s job, but it’s not the most important part.
Left without much evidence of substantive age-related difficulties, the press discussion of the issue has grown abstract. The focus has shifted from facts to political implications, just as it did with Clinton’s emails. Biden is “facing questions about his age and stamina” and “confronted with widespread concerns over his age,” journalists tell us. Pollsters now regularly include questions about Biden’s age in campaign polls; news organizations then report on those polls and ask the president himself about it; however predictable his answer (“I feel good”), it becomes fodder for another round of stories on the issue.
Long before the 2016 election, it became clear that Clinton hadn’t committed any transgressions more serious than the kind many others have been guilty of — including her two Republican predecessors as secretaries of state. So reporters found refuge in discussions of imagery and politics. Pundits insisted that some voters, somewhere, were just asking questions. It didn’t matter whether Clinton had done anything disqualifying, but whether there was a perception that she had done something disqualifying.
Likewise, reporters are now asking not “Is Biden too old?” but “Will voters think Biden is too old?” The answer is: “Yes, they’ll think that, especially if you keep telling them that they ought to be wondering whether Biden is too old.”
Those of us in the media must admit our own role in the process of directing the electorate’s attention.
This is the kind of self-fulfilling prophecy the media so often produces. If it talks a lot about Biden’s age, people will tell pollsters and focus group moderators they’re concerned about Biden’s age, and then their concern will be used as a justification for the media to talk more about Biden’s age. This coverage will also omit that many voters who worry about Biden’s age will still vote for him over Donald Trump, because they have far greater fears about the Republican.
If nothing else, those of us in the media must admit our own role in the process of directing the electorate’s attention. Communication scholars call this “agenda-setting”; in its classic formulation, Bernard Cohen wrote in 1963 that the press “may not be successful much of the time in telling people what to think, but it is stunningly successful in telling its readers what to think about.”
We make choices every day to point our audiences to some things and not others: a poll rather than a policy paper, a character flaw rather than a character strength, the latest micro-scandal rather than any of a thousand other things that affect more people’s lives. Every day’s paper or broadcast reflects a series of choices about what journalists have decided is important for people to think about, and there is always more omitted than included.
Here’s something we’re not talking about: Trump’s age. At the end of the next presidential term, he’d be 82, two years older than Biden is now. And there are plenty of reasons to question whether he is in possession of all his faculties.
Granted, Trump prefers stream-of-consciousness tirades to stumbling over words. And it can be hard to tell whether today’s deranged all-caps Truth Social rant is just a performance or new evidence of a man losing his grip on reality. But perhaps we should pay them closer attention to see if we can detect any signs of dementia.
Is that unfair? I’m just asking questions. And now that I have, one might say “questions are being raised” about Trump’s mental state.
I don’t happen to think his advanced age is the most disturbing thing about a potential second Trump presidency; there’s so much about it that’s terrifying, it can be hard to decide what to focus on. But it’s just as legitimate a question as it is for Biden. So we might as well start asking. Or maybe we can learn from 2016, and admit that coverage that “asks questions” without honestly seeking the answers doesn’t do the voters any good.
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