Analysis: Biden interview keeps existential questioning about his age

President Joe Biden’s struggle to prove he has the strength and cognitive capacity for a second term is turning into a painful personal and national ordeal.

Watching a visibly aging Biden answer tough questions about his health on prime-time television Friday (5) — questions that would normally remain between a patient and his doctor — felt like an affront to presidential dignity. It was sad to see a person respected and loved by many Americans suffer such a situation. And it would be hard-hearted not to empathize with Biden as he confronts the painful human realities of aging in the most public way imaginable.

Yet Biden’s stance, his shocking performance in the presidential debate and his defiant refusal to contemplate its implications for his re-election campaign mean he is forcing the country to have that conversation.

The political tide may be turning against Biden, but the interview underscored his deep pride in a presidency that took nearly half a century to achieve. And he is no closer to giving up his lifelong mantra of standing up and fighting when he is knocked down — a factor that will exacerbate the Democratic Party’s dilemma.

Although his interview performance was much stronger than the president’s often incoherent showing in the debate, CNN in Atlanta, that’s not saying much. It contained no new disasters that would immediately take him out of the race. But it also did little to calm the storm raging in his campaign and raised new questions about his health, amid growing signs that his Democratic power base is beginning to crumble.

It is increasingly clear that the president, his party and the country are sliding inexorably toward a political crisis that raises the extraordinary possibility that a presumptive nominee could be ousted weeks before his party’s national convention and four months before one of the most critical elections in history.

The threats to Biden’s prospects are mounting rapidly. Two more Democratic lawmakers on Friday (5) called on the president to cede the nomination to a younger candidate. Virginia Sen. Mark Warner has made headway in an effort to get Senate Democrats on the same page about Biden’s future and is reaching a point where he thinks it’s time for Biden to suspend his campaign, a source familiar with his efforts told The Associated Press. CNN . And House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries has scheduled a virtual meeting with party committee members as he faces mounting pressure from his conference over Biden’s stance, a Democratic lawmaker said.

A test defined by the campaign

Biden’s campaign had scheduled the interview with ABC News to try to prove that the president’s shaky debate performance last week was an aberration and to quell growing doubts about his standing as his party’s 2024 nominee.

He seemed more composed and fluent than he had in the debate. CNN . He made a much stronger case for his own successes in office and made a more effective case against Mr. Trump than he had in the debate. And he dug deep, despite calls from some Democratic lawmakers for him to drop his reelection bid and growing panic among many others who have yet to break cover.

He also dismissed concerns about his health, insisting he was no frailer than before.

“I don’t think anyone is more qualified to be president or win this race than I am,” Biden said in the interview conducted in the swing state of Wisconsin.

“If the Lord Almighty came down and said, ‘Joe, get out of the race,’ I would get out of the race,” Biden said, but added, “The Lord Almighty will not come down.”

But Biden’s admission that he felt “terrible” in the days leading up to his showdown with presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump has only raised new questions about his health. Those questions come at a time of growing anxiety about whether he is well enough at 81 to handle the grueling demands of the presidency and the strain of a reelection bid.

Biden compounded those doubts by appearing uncertain whether he had watched a recording of the debate — “I don’t think so,” he said when asked — and at times when he stumbled over sentences. And he offered yet another explanation for his poor performance in the debate, adding to his allies’ claims that he was overwhelmed with facts from staff, jet lagged and suffering from a cold. The president said Trump’s insistence on speaking even when his microphone was muted had discouraged him.

Asked if he was the same man who took office three years ago, Biden deflected and gave a litany of his accomplishments. “In terms of success, yes,” he said. “I was also the guy who put together a Middle East peace plan that may be coming to fruition. I was also the guy who expanded NATO. I was also the guy who grew the economy. All of the individual things that have been done were ideas that I had or that I did. I’ve moved on.”

The president has been adamant that the debate was just “a bad night,” for which he has taken responsibility. But more than a week after it happened, and amid growing fears among Democrats about their prospects in November and the possibility of what it will mean for democracy if Trump wins a second term, one thing is becoming increasingly clear: One bad night on such a high-profile stage in front of millions of viewers could be enough to irreparably damage the campaign of a president who will turn 82 two weeks after Election Day, who the vast majority of Americans fear is unfit to serve and who is urging the country to keep him in office until January 2029.

Americans are worried about the next four years

Biden and his supporters caution that his painful 90 minutes on stage in Atlanta should not overshadow the achievements of his presidency. And they say the threat posed by Trump’s autocratic instincts and promise to dedicate a second presidency to “retribution” far outweigh concerns about Biden’s ability to deliver.

But the question millions of Americans are asking has less to do with reviewing the legacy of Biden’s first term and more about whether he can function during another four grueling years in the White House.

The interview also raised the question of whether the president is fully aware of the corrosive impact of the debate on Democrats’ confidence in their chances of defeating Trump. He sparred with ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos over polls that showed him falling further behind the former president nationally and in swing states.

The interview was one of a series of events, including Friday’s rally and a planned news conference at next week’s NATO summit in Washington, that the campaign has touted as moments to prove Biden’s fitness.

But Democratic Rep. Brad Sherman of California told the CNN that the president needed to do an extended, live television interview, as opposed to the one taped on ABC. Other members are demanding that the president do much more outings to prove his resilience, even though the campaign on Friday promised an “aggressive” schedule of events in July.

But that promise hasn’t stopped growing demands for Biden to step aside.

“President Biden has done a tremendous service to our country, but now is the time for him to follow in the footsteps of one of our founding fathers, George Washington, and step aside to allow new leaders to step up and run against Donald Trump,” Massachusetts Rep. Seth Moulton told Boston radio station WBUR in an interview that was released before the ABC interview aired. And Illinois Rep. Mike Quigley said Biden’s continued presence in the race “has almost no hope of success.”

“I would say, Mr. President, your legacy is set. We owe you the greatest debt of gratitude. The only thing you can do now to cement this forever and avoid a total catastrophe is to step down and let someone else do it,” Quigley told MSNBC. He later added in CNN : “What we need now — and what I think requires courage — is to step back and recognize that the president of the United States does not have the stamina to overcome the deficit here and that will affect all of us.”

Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey didn’t go that far, but said in a statement to CNN that Biden needed to “carefully evaluate whether he remains our best hope for defeating Trump. Whatever President Biden decides, I am committed to doing everything in my power to defeat Donald Trump.”

The agonizing over Biden’s fate is especially painful for Democrats because many of them believe the president has done a good job reviving the economy after Covid-19, boosting job growth, leveraging U.S. allies abroad and passing big-ticket infrastructure and climate change plans. But increasingly, it seems that their fear of a Trump presidency could be overshadowed by their overwhelming satisfaction with Biden’s achievements.

To allay these concerns, Biden used the rally to move from questions about his age to try to refocus attention on what he actually did in office.

“I keep seeing all these stories about being too old,” he said. “Let me tell you something. I wasn’t too old to create over 15 million new jobs. To make sure 21 million Americans are covered by the Affordable Care Act. Was I too old to clear student debt for nearly 5 million Americans? Too old to put the first black woman on the Supreme Court of the United States of America?”

After the debate, Biden’s every word is under intense scrutiny and risks reinforcing a critical narrative about his age and mental acuity after he has etched in viewers’ minds the image of a struggling president diminished by age.

So a fatalistic statement in the ABC interview about how he would feel next January if Trump won is likely to inflame many Democrats’ concerns about his mindset, his understanding of his situation and what will happen in November.

“I will feel that as long as I have given it my all and done the ‘best’ job I know I can do, that is what it is all about,” Biden said.

The Biden campaign later contacted the CNN to argue that the president had not said “more good,” and ABC News changed the transcript of the interview to read “I did the best job I know I can do.” The editor’s note said the transcript had been “updated for clarity.” The audio of the quote is inconclusive on the issue. But the situation underscored the extent to which every word the president utters after the debate is under the utmost scrutiny.