Why does Biden look so much older than Trump when they are only three and a half years apart?
Only three and a half years separate President Joe Biden (81 years old) from his possible rival in the next November elections, Donald Trump (78 years old), and yet potential American voters mostly focus their criticism of the Democrat’s age as a problem for exercising office.
How has Trump managed to conceal his almost eight decades of age and present himself as a jovial being, full of strength and mental agility, while Biden must constantly fight to defend that he is fully capable of running for office again?
Political communications experts point to two main reasons: a carefully crafted strategy by Trump’s advisers to make him appear younger and a reiteration of the message “Biden is too old” perpetuated by the media, which scrutinizes every possible mistake by the Democratic president.
According to Tammy R. Vigil, an expert in political communications at Boston University, Trump’s “advantage” is “that he presents himself in such a bold and boastful way that people sometimes forget his age.”
But, “if you look closely at what he actually says or what he actually writes, he is generally not very coherent and makes many mistakes,” he told EFE in a telephone interview.
This attitude and his “self-confidence,” according to the expert, lead his followers to “ignore mistakes,” whereas Biden “is much more considerate and thoughtful,” an attitude that sometimes causes “a kind of hesitation to emerge in his speech that accentuates the problem of age.”
According to an ABC News/Ipsos poll released this week, 27% of respondents said only Biden is too old, while 3% said only Trump is. Meanwhile, 59% of respondents said both were too old to serve.
Biden’s advanced age, as the first octogenarian to occupy the White House, is frequently questioned and has again made headlines following the publication of special prosecutor Robert Hur’s report containing the conclusions of the investigation into his withholding of classified documents from his time as Barack Obama’s vice president (2009–2017).
In a harsh text in which she recommended not charging him, she stressed that he demonstrated a “significantly limited” memory during the days he was testifying about the case.
A message that repeats itself
According to Ann Crigler, a professor of political science at the University of Southern California, the focus is more on Biden’s age because of the effective communication campaign that the Republican Party has been carrying out for years, boosted by the media and “public opinion pollsters.”
“Trump and the Republicans have been harping on about his age for a long time, and the former president has joked about it,” he told EFE.
Vigil has thus succeeded, he notes, in creating “a narrative” replicated in the news that “speaks of Biden as old and Trump as grandiloquent, instead of making a fair assessment on the issue of age,” he adds.
According to University of Michigan political science expert Aaron Kall, Trump is also a “master of television entertainment” who knows “how to reach people.”
“Trump has a lot of experience as an actor; he is someone who has been on television and has done a good job creating a younger image, like Hollywood actors, through makeup artists and other tricks,” he told EFE.
The trick of blonde dye and self-tanner
Her physical appearance, says Vigil, has also been part of that narrative. “She dyed her hair; she uses self-tanning lotion,” she explains.
His image is enhanced by his partners, who are much younger than him. Melania Trump, 53, is 24 years younger.
“A lot of older men marry younger women as a sign of virility, and it’s something Trump was very strategic about. Every time he remarried, it was to a younger woman,” Vigil said.
On the other side, there is Biden and his white hair, who has also struggled all his life with “a serious stuttering problem.”
“Sometimes people blame their age for something that has to do with stuttering because they use strategies to combat it,” she explains. Thus, something that “is not a question of age” ends up being interpreted as such.
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