Biden at 80: how old is too old to be a world leader?

Joe Biden is about to become the first sitting US president to enter his ninth decade, sparking debate over how old is too old to be a world leader.

Biden’s 80th birthday on 20 November will leave the US in “unmapped territory: an octogenarian in the Oval Office”, said The Washington Post.

And if he runs for and wins a second term in office, Biden would be 86 when he leaves the White House.

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Leader who ‘could drop dead tomorrow’

The previous oldest US president, Ronald Reagan, left office at the age of 77 and was “widely considered at the time to be pushing the boundaries of age for a chief executive”, said The Washington Post.

Biden has tried to play down the age issue in the run-up to his birthday, insisting that he feels decades younger, noted the New York Post. Asked by a radio host earlier this month what “80-year-old Joe” would “tell 50-year-old Joe”, Biden replied: “That I’m still 50 – that’s the first thing I’d tell him. You think I’m kidding. I’m not kidding.”

But the president has acknowledged that his age may be a worry for voters. During an interview last month with US broadcaster MSNBC, he said: “I could get a disease, I could drop dead tomorrow. I think it’s a legitimate thing to be concerned about, anyone’s age, including mine.”

Biden’s potential 2024 election opponent Donald Trump is no spring chicken either, at 76, yet frequently criticises the Democrat leader over his “performance and his age”, said USA Today’s political correspondent David Jackson.

Other nations have been led be politicians significantly older than Biden, however.

Malaysia’s Mahathir Mohamad set a world record in May 2018, when he became the oldest serving state leader at the age of 92 years and 304 days. He held the top job until March 2020 and is now seeking re-election at the age of 97.

Tunisia’s first freely elected president, Beji Caid Essebsi, passed away in office in 2019 at age 92. And when Raúl Castro stepped down as Cuban leader last year, he was the ripe old age of 89 – the same age as the current president of Cameroon, Paul Biya.

Michel Aoun was 89 when he stepped down as leader of Lebanon last month, and Palestine’s Mahmoud Abbas is 87.

The oldest ever UK prime minister was William Gladstone, who was 84 when he resigned in 1894.

Wisdom of age?

“Few nations have any upper limit on the ages of their leaders,” wrote Adam Taylor in The Strait Times in 2018. And “when push comes to shove, the few limits there are can be strategically ignored”, he added.

China’s Xi Jinping embarked on a third term last month at the age of 69, in defiance of Beijing’s informal retirement age of 68 for senior party leaders.

Uganda had a 75-year age cap for presidential candidates until 2018, when the limit was scrapped by President Yoweri Museveni. He remains the African nation’s leader at the age of 78.

In 2015, France debated an upper age limit of 70 for standing for election, after a government-backed report concluded that a cap would open politics to more young people. But the concept “provoked accusations of ageism from MPs”, Newsweek reported.

Yet “there certainly are benefits to having older leaders in office”, argued Taylor in The Strait Times. “They can draw on wisdom accrued over decades of high-level decision-making, as well as the accompanying support and name recognition.”

US voters appear unconvinced. A New York Times/Siena College poll of 849 registered voters in July found that two-thirds of Democratic supporters believed the party should put forward a new presidential candidate in 2024, with 33% giving Biden’s age as their primary reason.