It’s different for everyone
James Fallows has a great newsletter that you should subscribe to if you can. He’s been writing about all this, particularly the political press, for many years and his perspective is extremely valuable.
This week he starts off interrogating the idea that age is a static thing for everyone and he quotes some experts on the subject:
Last month several doctors and other authors assessed evidence that Biden was on the fortunate side of that divide, a “superager” on the Holmes / Stevens / Carter model. This is even though Biden “reads” as older than his near-contemporary Trump, mainly because of the stiffness of his gait. In this piece at MedPage Today and this in The Hill the authors emphasized differential aging rates and said about Biden:
The geriatricians evaluating Biden’s medical history in 2020 found evidence to suggest he could be a “superager” — a subgroup of people aged 80 years and older that operate physically and cognitively at a level that is common among those much younger.1
There is no clinical evidence for cognitive decline in President Biden — despite armchair gerontologists declaring otherwise.
Then he asks a pertinent question. Might age be an advantage? In our youth obsessed culture that’s heresy but he makes a good case:
The job of president finally comes down to judgment calls. Emphasize this bill, and not that one. (For Obama: the health-care act, versus a big environmental act.) Compromise here, but draw the line there. (For Biden, the tradeoffs necessary to get the big economic bills through.) Fight for this appointment, but give up on that one. (For Biden, going with some GOP choices for judges.) Trust this person, not that. Decide where to fight (Ukraine), where to fall back (Afghanistan).
The presidents we respect, looking back, mainly distinguished themselves with these big calls. By my lights, Biden has made these calls correctly at an unusually high rate. There are some missed opportunities he will look back on, but fewer than most of his predecessors. Even if you disagree with his calls, I think you’d have to observe that they were made in a sane and orderly way, through advisors who have shown far less back-biting and squabbling than in previous administrations, and with practically no scandals.
The same Hill piece says on this point, with emphasis in original:
Verbal memory, inductive reasoning and vocabulary increase with age — cognitive skills particularly important for decision-making.
It’s true that “fluid intelligence” (the capacity to learn new ways of solving problems and performing activities quickly and abstractly) does indeed decline with age. But “crystallized intelligence” (accumulated knowledge that allows for intelligent decision-making) and “tacit knowledge” (practical or pragmatic knowledge learned through experience) increase with age.
In practical terms, someone President Biden’s age might take a longer time to learn how to fly a plane, but he would be less likely to crash it relative to a younger person.
(Or a stupid, sociopath but that’s another story.)
I think that’s key. I have often tried to imagine how Biden would have handled COVID differently that Trump and I think it’s obvious that he wouldn’t have been telling people to use snake oil or lying about the threat in order help his reelection campaign. But even more importantly, he would have known how to deploy the federal government in the early days to get the medical supplies to places like NY City where people were dying by the thousands and move the congress much faster to deal with the economic fallout. He would have ensured that the people who were charged with the details were experienced hands who knew what they were doing. Trump did none of that because he’s a narcissistic imbecile and he empowered people like his arrogant, inexperienced son-in-law to handle the emergency.
Fallows on the mix-up of Egyptian president Al-Sisi in his press conference:
-First, everyone does this. A weary Barack Obama once said that had been to “all 57 states” of the country. I once introduced a panelist at a conference with her middle rather than her last name. As a pilot I’ve screwed up read-backs of frequencies and routings to air traffic control. On the same show last night in which he talked about Biden’s “Mexico” gaffe, Jesse Watters, of Fox, started an interview with Kristi Noem by introducing her as “Governor of South Carolina,” rather than South Dakota, where she actually serves.
All of this is the spoken version of “auto-correct” on a computer, which often fills in things in ways we don’t intend. And it’s very highly correlated with fatigue.
-Second, Biden’s illustrations are neither repeated (like Donald Trump’s Nikki Haley, Nikki Haley, Nikki Haley when he meant Nancy Pelosi), nor grossly fictitious. (As when Trump said in New Hampshire that he had carried the state in general elections, which he had not.) It’s like the difference in how the two men handled classified information they had taken home, according to the new special counsel report. Biden erred largely by inadvertence, and corrected the problem when it was found. Trump stonewalled.
Was “Sisi of Mexico” a gaffe for Joe Biden? Yes. But one worth keeping in perspective, unless there is evidence that Biden has confused the underlying realities, not just the names,
He did not confuse the underlying realities as he amply demonstrated in the entirely cogent comment within which that slip occurred. Ask yourself if Trump could have ever said something like this:
Q A question on Israel, sir. Can you provide an update on the hostage negotiations? The hostage negotiations — can you provide an update of the hostage negotiations in Israel?
THE PRESIDENT: The hostage negotiation, look —
I’m of the view, as you know, that the conduct of the response in Gaza — in the Gaza Strip has been over the top. I think that — as you know, initially, the President of
Mexico[Egypt], El-Sisi, did not want to open up the gate to allow humanitarian material to get in. I talked to him. I convinced him to open the gate.I talked to Bibi to open the gate on the Israeli side. I’ve been pushing really hard — really hard to get humanitarian assistance into Gaza. There are a lot of innocent people who are starving, a lot of innocent people who are in trouble and dying, and it’s got to stop, number one.
Number two, I was also in the position that I’m the guy that made the case that we have to do much more to increase the amount of material going in, including fuel, including other items. I’ve been on the phone with the Qataris, I’ve been on the phone with the Egyptians, I’ve been on the phone with the Saudis to get as much aid as we possibly can into Gaza.
There are innocent people — innocent women and children — who are also in bad — badly in need of help. And so, that’s what we’re pushing right now.
And I’m pushing very hard now to deal with this hostage ceasefire. Because, as I — you know, I’ve been working tirelessly in this deal — how can I say this without revealing? — to lead to a sustained pause in the fighting in — the actions taking place in — in the Gaza Strip.
And — because I think if we can get the delay for that — the initial delay, I think that we would be able to extend that so that we can increase the prospect that this fighting in Gaza changes.
There’s also negotiations — you may recall, in the very beginning, right after — right before Hamas attacked, I was in contact with the Saudis and others to work out a deal where they would recognize Israel’s right to exist, let them — make them part of the Middle East, recognize them fully, in return for certain things that the United States would commit to do.
And the commitment to — that we were proposing to do related to two — to two items. I’m not going to go in detail. But one of them was to deal with the protection against their arch enemy to the northwest — northeast, I should say. The second one, by providing ammunition and materiel for them to defend themselves.
Coincidentally, that’s the timeframe when this broke out. I have no proof for what I’m about to say, but it’s not unreasonable to suspect that the — Hamas understood what was about to take place and wanted to break it up before it happened.
Here’s how Trump answers when asked about Gaza:
In an interview with Univision he said this:
“So you have a war that’s going on, and you’re probably going to have to let this play out. You’re probably going to have to let it play out because a lot of people are dying.
“It should have never started. There was no way it would have started again. Iran didn’t have the money because Iran is leading this. And only fools would say that’s not true. They’re leading this. They’re very tricky, very smart, very cunning. They’re leading it, and it’s got to end.”
“There is no hatred like the Palestinian hatred of Israel and Jewish people. And probably the other way around also; I don’t know. You know, it’s not as obvious, but probably that’s it too. So sometimes you have to let things play out and you have to see where it ends.”
Here he is on the stump promising to deport anyone who protested against the Israeli actions in Gaza:
Fallows on the press:
After Biden finished his remarks last night, White House reporters bayed and yelled at him, more aggressively than I can ever recall. They exceeded the baseline I wrote about nearly 30 years ago in the book Breaking the News, about the macho-style code of the press room that equated being ill-mannered with being intellectually tough:
Journalists justify their intrusiveness and excesses by claiming that they are the public’s representatives, asking the questions their fellow citizens would ask if they had the privilege of meeting with Presidents and senators. In fact they ask questions that only their fellow political professionals care about. And they often do so—as at the typical White House news conference—with a discourtesy and rancor that represent the public’s views much less than they reflect the modern journalist’s belief that being independent boils down to acting hostile.
After this yelling session, most of the leading press ran stories like this one in the NYT, saying that the one word—Mexico—had:
placed Mr. Biden’s advanced age, the singularly uncomfortable subject looming over his re-election bid, back at the center of America’s political conversation.
Note the agent-free verb “placed.” It’s actually the journalists who are placing it there—as they placed Hillary Clinton’s emails eight years ago, and as they have not placed Donald Trump’s Nikki Haley, Nikki Haley, Nikki Haley.3 Putting your own spin and frame on events is fine. That’s what I’m doing here. But when you’re going to do it, it’s better just to say so.
Personally, I think he’s being too nice here. The media was utterly disgraceful in that press conference. They were screaming and screeching like jackals. Note this rude exchange:
Q Mr. President, for months when you were asked about your age, you would respond with the words “Watch me.”
THE PRESIDENT: Watch me.
Q Many American people have been watching, and they have expressed concerns about your age. They —
THE PRESIDENT: That is your judgement.
Q They —
THE PRESIDENT: That is your judgement.
Q This is according to public polling.
THE PRESIDENT: That is not the judgement —
Q They express concerns —
THE PRESIDENT: — of the press.
Q They express concerns about your mental acuity. They say that you are too old.
Mr. President, in December, you told me that you believe there are many other Democrats who could defeat Donald Trump. So, why does it have to be you now? Why — what is your answer to that question?
What is a person supposed to say to something like that? Is it designed to elicit some information or is it just a nasty question designed to elicit an emotional reaction? It’s a nasty way of asking, “have you any plans to drop out of the race?” which is also inappropriate because it’s clear he does not. It’s just designed to embarrass him to his face in front of the whole country. It’s not journalism.
His answer to this question, by the way, was spot on:
Because I’m the most qualified person in this country to be President of the United States and finish the job I started.
So STFU.
Another ridiculous person asked this one:
Q Mr. President, why are you confusing the names of world leaders?
As Fallows says, everyone does that including half the Fox New hosts, just this week. I do it all the time.
Who the hell do these people think they are? Ah, I know the answer. They are like piranhas in a feeding frenzy when these kinds of scandals hit and I hate to say but it there are way too many liberals and progressives who get all febrile and excited when there’s blood in the water and forget themselves as well. The media kewl kidz have been doing this for many years now and I guess there’s no end to it.
These are the results:
They haven’t learned a thing.
I agree wholeheartedly with Fallows on this point:
The best test of whether people “can” do a job is how they have actually done it. I would argue that Biden, the oldest president ever, has been one of the best at doing the job in decades. Choosing and managing a staff. Guiding through his legislation. Containing frictions within his own party. Taking advantage of chaos and schisms on the other side. Meanwhile presiding over the most broadly-based economic growth most Americans have ever experienced.
Maybe if the press could find the time between their gleeful enjoyment of ageist snark about Biden and shrugging over the fact that his opponent is a fascist imbecile they could squeeze in a few of those facts as well.