A cemetery is not the best place for a presidential candidate facing questions about his age.
But there was Bob Dole, hunched slightly as he stared at a tombstone during his 1996 run for the White House. Nearby, in the window of an antique store, a handwritten sign urged the 73-year-old Republican candidate to show his younger rival, President Clinton, who he It was not an antique.
Joe Biden is just the latest presidential candidate to face questions about his physical and mental capabilities. Before Dole, there was Ronald Reagan, a relative youth in 1980 when, at age 69, he faced the age question in his third presidential campaign.
But the issue is particularly serious for Biden, who, at 81, is the oldest president in history, as special counsel Robert Hur blatantly reminded voters last week in his pseudo-diagnosis of the chief executive as “a “well-meaning old man with a bad memory.”
Veterans of those previous presidential campaigns have some advice on how Biden should handle the age issue, which is not going away and, they insisted, cannot be ignored.
“He walks across the White House lawn and looks like an old man,” said Stu Spencer, who was Reagan's top political adviser and will turn 97 next week. “He has to show more energy. “As he did in last year's State of the Union address.”
“You have to take it straight,” said Scott Reed, who ran Dole's presidential campaign. (To be clear, Dole's stop at the cemetery was not something his strategists came up with. The candidate wanted to lay flowers on a family member's grave.)
But, Reed said, Biden should not confront the issue as he did Thursday night in a cantankerous news conference.
Biden summoned reporters on short notice after Hur cleared him of criminal charges for mishandling classified documents and described him as a moth-eaten, staggering geriatric. “He seems surprised,” Reed said of the president's surly performance. “He seems offside and looks terrible.”
Of course, Biden is only a few years older than his almost certain November opponent, former President Trump.
Trump, who will turn 78 in June, is the second-oldest candidate to seek the White House and suffers his share of memory lapses and moments of confusion, such as confusing Nikki Haley with Nancy Pelosi. But the age issue hasn't plagued him like it has Biden, in part because Trump is more boisterous and forceful, even as he threatens to suspend the Constitution and turn our allies over to Russia.
Life isn't fair, to quote one of the country's youngest presidents, John F. Kennedy.
So how else can Biden overcome what is arguably the biggest obstacle standing between him and a second term?
Some of the tips are obvious.
“I wouldn't go to a nursing home or a senior center,” said Don Sipple, who produced Dole's presidential ads. “Ever.”
And, Reed suggested, no more “ice cream stops,” a basic Biden photo opportunity. “Going to buy ice cream reminds everyone to go to their grandparents.”
It is better, Reed said, to put Biden in environments where he is doing his job. “More pictures in the Oval Office,” Reed suggested, “or meet with his cabinet.”
Sipple agreed. He has spent decades observing candidates (George W. Bush, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jerry Brown among them) through the lens of a camera.
“What would be really interesting to me would be a superficial treatment of a day in the life of a president. Where you just see a sincere, real, not contrived, almost documentary-style description,” Sipple said. “Do you swim laps in the pool? Do you get on a treadmill? You really need to have a day in your life where you're implicitly attacking the precept that this guy isn't up to the job.
“It's something you've never seen before,” Sipple said, “and I think it could draw some attention.”
There is endless free advice available.
In December, I sat with a group of Biden's generational peers in a community of people 55 and older in the hills of the East Bay, outside San Francisco. They ranged in age up to 92 years old and had many suggestions for the president. Between them, he lifts and projects your voice and stops running towards the podium.
But reaching out to a candidate with his customs isn't easy, as the stop at Dole Cemetery in rural Ohio suggests. (He didn't just address the campaign's message of the day, about the virtues of agriculture, but offered a case study on how No to handle an irritating issue.)
The late senator was seriously injured in World War II and spent years undergoing painful physical therapy. For that reason, he recalled a former adviser, Dole didn't like being told what to do.
Biden may be the same way. At his mature age, there are few peers with his longevity and even fewer with his more than 50 years of political experience, that is, with the ability to give him orders.
Another Washington veteran, George HW Bush, used to close conversations by saying, “If you're so smart, why am I president and you're not?”
To reach out to Biden, Sipple offered one more piece of advice. “You have to speak truth to power,” she said.
“You can't hide something like this from the American people. You just have to say, 'Mr. President, if you want to continue in your job and you want to get a second term and serve a second term, you're going to have to turn the page.' Because the polling data couldn't be clearer: 'He's too old, he doesn't act like a vibrant human being.'”
Call it an appeal to ego, vanity or harsh political reality. Biden has one foot in his political grave. He doesn't want to be buried in November.
