The age question for presidential candidates is more than four decades old. President Ronald Reagan answered it with a pledge to resign if he became impaired, and later with a clever joke that reset his campaign from a stumbling debate performance to a 49-state landslide and a second term.
But the question facing him is far more intimate, according to one expert who covered Reagan's health during his presidency. A surge of retiring baby boomers means that millions more Americans know when they see someone declining. For many, this widespread experience made Biden’s halting performance during Thursday’s debate a familiar reality check.
Reagan faced the same questions even before he was elected as the oldest president to that point. In 1980, at 69, he pledged to resign if he sensed serious cognitive decline while in office. Neither Trump nor Biden has made a similar pledge, and their campaigns did not respond to requests for comment Wednesday.
Reagan's age — really, his fitness for a second term — was now indelibly part of the 1984 race, a striking parallel to what is happening in 2024 in the aftermath of Biden's shaky debate performance. But there are key differences.
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