Things are not going badly for Joe Biden. The US President performed much better than expected in the midterms - the elections to the House of Representatives and Senate. The oldie in the White House always appears to be in great form when something is at stake.
In the meantime, the political establishment in Washington, compared to which a snake pit looks like a children's paddling pool, is already talking about the "timeless Joe". That's a gross exaggeration because Biden won't turn 80 until November 20.
However, no one was that old! At 80, Joe Biden is by far the oldest US President of all time. But he sits firmly and above all safely in the saddle.
While his adversary and predecessor in office, Donald Trump (76), in the "gold-decorated plush world" of his golf residence Mar-a-Lago in Florida, according to "Spiegel", announced a renewed candidacy in the next elections for the US presidency in 2024 and with who opened the election campaign with the usual lies and rants, Joe Biden was the sovereign commander-in-chief at the G20 summit in Bali.
"When he was asked in Bali shortly before his departure if he had any comment on his rival's announcement, Biden said: 'Not really'," noted the "mirror". The President had Deputy White House Speaker Andrew Bates comment on the ex-President's speech via Twitter: "Bored? You're not alone."
The President and the Clown - this is how Biden sees the confrontation with Trump. An image that seems to have stuck in the minds of his compatriots. In fact, we see a good-humoured man who rolls off the hysterical Trump attacks in a statesmanlike manner.
The only question is: do you still trust an eighty-year-old who would have passed the age of 82 at the start of a second term of office to hold the most important office in the world?
In the US, presidential candidates have to meet four basic requirements: they must have the right to stand as a candidate (must not be incapacitated or incarcerated), they must have US citizenship (natural born citizen = born in the USA) and they must have been in the States for at least 14 years Life. In addition, they must be at least 35 years old.
The upper limit is open, which means that the candidates should be physically and mentally fit. Too much mildness with age could be interpreted as a character weakness, dynamic appearance is always good.
Observers want to have noticed a shrinking process in human dynamics at the most powerful office in the world. "The White House makes people old very quickly. This is shown by the before and after pictures that are regularly published by former incumbents," writes the Swiss news portal "watson.ch", which is particularly true of President Barack Obama (61), who is 19 years younger than Biden.
David Axelrod, Barack Obama's former chief strategist, explained in the New York Times: "The presidency is a monstrously arduous job and the stark reality is that the age of the president (Biden - ed.) is closer to a second term would be 90 than 80."
Indeed, Joe Biden is an elderly man. "Creepy sleepy Joe Biden", the creepy sleepy Joe Biden. That's what Donald Trump called him, a man proven to lie all the time. However, Trump is already 76. After Joe Biden, he is the undisputed No. 2 in the eternal list of elderly US presidents, and if re-elected he would be 78. Nevertheless, Trump and his lawyer Rudy Giuliani, 78, claimed of Biden: showing signs of dementia!" An accusation that was constantly repeated by "Fox News".
That's actually rude to a man who, prior to his job as first man in the White House, was vice president of the United States for eight years under Barack Obama and served as a Delaware state senator for 36 years in the Capitol. As a lawyer, he has taught American constitutional law at the School of Law of the private Widener University since 1991.
However, Biden has also earned a reputation for often saying the wrong thing at the wrong time, writes the American "Time" magazine. He is a "Gaffe-Machine" (blunder machine), which has nothing to do with his age.
In 2007 he said of his future boss Obama that he was "the first Afro-American who can articulate himself, who is smart and clean".
In 2008, he asked fellow Democratic Party fellow Missouri Senator Chuck Graham to accept his applause. "Get up, Chuck, make them see you!" Graham has been paraplegic since a car accident when he was a teenager...
Sometimes he has dropouts. For the 2020 primary, he said to a man who criticized Biden's call for stricter gun laws in the United States: "You talk shit!" Biden then indicated that the whole thing could also be clarified in front of the door.
On the other hand, Joe Biden, who once suffered from a stutter and fought this weakness by reciting poetry in front of a mirror, has the gift of emotionally hugging audiences like no other Democratic politician. He shows heart, and then he doesn't look old or even dodder. Then his eyes shine, even when it comes to deadly sad things.
This charisma is rooted in the very personal tragedy of Joe Biden. In 1972, his first wife Neilia (born 1942) and one-year-old daughter Naomi Christine died in a car accident. The two sons Joseph "Beau" (born 1969) and Robert Hunter (born 1970) survived with serious injuries. Joseph "Beau" died of cancer in 2015.
As Vice President Joe Biden said at an event for parents of fallen US soldiers: "There will come a day when the thought of your loved ones will put a smile on your face before a tear runs down your face. . The pain will never go away completely, but it will become manageable. I promise you that."
According to his doctors, President Biden is physically fit. He doesn't drink or smoke, he's not overweight, he works out regularly in the gym. And he looks amazing for his age.
After the midterms, ntv commented euphorically about Biden: "He is a personality of balance and equilibrium and therefore did not succumb to the temptation to programmatically counter the right wedge with a left wedge or to react to hatred with fury. Joe Biden has Donald Trump with integrity and cleverness, beaten with moderation and mediocrity - for the second time the smarter one has won."
Of course, most Americans want a younger candidate to run for the next presidency. However, they also feel that there is no better person available to put Donald Trump in his place again, as he did in 2020, when, according to The Atlantic magazine, most voters wanted someone "who didn't like a madman tweets, not telling them to take anti-Covid sanitizer, and not sullying the honor of war heroes, civil rights icons, or disabled reporters. Someone who is, quite simply, decent and serious."
That's 80-year-old Joe Biden. At the beginning of next year, after intensive consultations with his wife, he wants to decide whether he will run again in 2024.
