Leaders of the Democratic Party are now debating whether to ask U.S. President Joe Biden not to run again based on his performance in Thursday night’s debate with Donald Trump. They are correct in one respect. Asking him is preferable to forcing his exit, if that is what the party seeks. Yet they can also take a cue from Jill Biden. Last year, the first lady hinted that her husband has options other than being president.
“It’s Joe’s decision,” she told CNN. “And we support whatever he wants to do. If he’s in, we’re there.”
The idea of not setting limits on Mr. Biden’s future reminds us of the late actor Glenda Jackson. After decades of working in film and theater, she went on to a successful career as a politician, only to return to the theater at age 82 playing King Lear on Broadway for eight shows a week. When asked by The New York Times if she feared getting older, she replied, “The essential you is on the inside, it stays the same.”
As the average life span has risen, views have expanded about the potential of older people to keep contributing. “We’ve added a couple of decades, essentially an entire generation, onto our lives, and we haven’t, kind of, socio-culturally figured out how to handle that,” geriatrician Louise Aronson told CBS News.
Dr. Aronson believes public anxiety about aging leaders reflects a fear of aging itself. She suggested in a Wall Street Journal column that people should instead “create the kind of world we want to be old in, one of opportunities and recognition of competence at all stages of life.”
Mr. Biden may decide to stay in the race, as is very possible in coming days and weeks. But if he does bow out as a candidate, it need not be a retirement but rather a “rewirement.” When George Washington stepped down as military commander in 1783 at age 51, he thought of himself as “gray” and “almost blind.” Yet he went on to be president for two terms. Then at age 66, he agreed to serve in the military again, Maurizio Valsania, a history professor at the University of Turin, wrote for The Conversation.
Had Mr. Biden lived in that age, stated Dr. Valsania, “his value would have likely outweighed his deficits in the eyes” of a country that was “aware of the wisdom that certain old leaders could still provide.” Such wisdom need not be confined to the curved walls of the Oval Office.