- Joe Biden made a forceful case that he's not too old to be president.
- Polls continue to show that Americans think Biden is simply too old to remain as president.
President Joe Biden on Thursday used his State of the Union to take concerns about his age head on.
Biden waited until almost the end of his address, but the president made it clear that he would not ignore the question consuming his reelection. He used a mixture of self-effacing humor and the cold realism of what he sees as the stakes in this election to make his point.
"I know it may not look like it, but I've been around a while," Biden said. "When you get to be my age, certain things become clearer than ever. I know the American story. Again and again I've seen the contest between competing forces in the battle for the soul of our nation."
The president even turned questions about his age into an attack on former President Donald Trump.
"Now some other people my age see differently, the American story of revenge, resentment, and retribution," Biden said. "That's not me."
In a line that is starting to pop up more often, Biden argued that the election will come down to the age of ideas the two major candidates are offering.
"My fellow Americans, the issue facing our nation isn't how old we are: It's about how old our ideas are," he said. "You can't lead with ancient ideas that only take us back."
Biden has faced renewed concerns about his age after special counsel Robert Hur's report. Hur concluded that he couldn't charge the 81-year-old with improperly retaining classified information after leaving the Obama administration because Biden would present himself to a jury as "a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory."
The White House and Biden's own lawyer have strongly disputed Hur's conclusions about the president's memory.
Polling shows that even in this hyper-partisan era, Americans broadly agree in their concerns about Biden's age. A recent New York Times-Siena College poll found that even 61% of respondents who voted for Biden in 2020 thought he was "just too old."
Democrats also bristle about the extent of concerns about Biden's age compared to former President Donald Trump, the man Biden surpassed to become the oldest president. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Trump's 2016 opponent, wrote on Wednesday that the two men are "effectively the same age." Trump is 77.
"When you're lucky to live into your seventies or eighties, the difference of a few years doesn't matter all that much," Clinton wrote on Instagram.