Joe Biden's past explains a lot about his present dilemma

National Post, 14 July 2024

While Biden matured in the Senate, Trump sought the spotlight. In 2024, it's all about the show, and Biden can no longer perform

As the American presidential melodrama unfolds, the formative culture of the two candidates becomes more and more evident.

It’s the senator vs. the promoter.

While the two candidates are close in age, and are now competing for the same office, they have long been formed in very different professional environments.

Go back to 1973. Joe Biden is a young senator — as young as is constitutionally possible, having been elected at age 29 but sworn in at age 30. He is the youngest man in a chamber organized by seniority. The other senator from Delaware, William Roth, is getting started on a 30-year run. The Democratic whip at the time is Robert Byrd of West Virginia, already 14 years a senator. Vice-president Biden would eulogize him in 2010 when Byrd died in office, having ensconced himself for 51 years.

Men — and later a few women — marinate in the Senate for decades. In congressional history, 25 have served 36 years, including Biden himself. It is not uncommon for senators to serve well into manifest decrepitude, the most recent being the late Dianne Feinstein of California, dying in office last year at age 90. She only served 30 years.

It’s bipartisan. Republican Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma, who died this week, ran for re-election at the age of 85 in 2020. He originally intended to serve into his 90s, but retired at 87 in 2022. Ill health finally caught up with him. He served a mere 28 years. And of course there was Strom Thurmond, who lived to be a 100 years old while still sitting as a senator; 48 years, first as a Democrat and then as a Republican.

Biden was formed over decades in a culture of geriatric entitlement. To continue forever, despite diminished capacity, was the norm. When Biden ran for vice-president alongside Barack Obama in 2008, he ran at the same time for re-election to the Senate. Why ever give up what belongs to you — even when you want something else?

When he was elected vice-president, Biden resigned from the Senate and his best friend, Ted Kaufman, was appointed to replace him. Some people give their friends souvenirs from their time in office; Biden gave his friend the office itself.

Sen. Lloyd Bentsen did the same in 1988, running both for vice-president and senator from Texas. In the debate that year, he bested Dan Quayle, born in 1947 — still younger today than both Biden and Trump. Quayle was an infant when Bentsen was first elected to congress in the Truman landslide of 1948. Forty years later Bentsen was running for two offices.

Not running for reasons of age and incapacity? Biden has spent his entire life around senators who did just that without a second thought — or even a first thought, if their mental diminishment was sufficiently advanced.

In the gerontocracy of the Senate, advanced decrepitude is considered a mark of honour. Biden has shared a thousand stories — admiringly — about colleagues whose staff arranged for them to be stage-managed when already gaga. He is now being invited to consider a higher standard than prevailed during his first 50 years in Washington. It’s understandable that he finds it all annoying and impertinent.

In 1973, Trump took over his father’s company and renamed it. The Trump Organization was in real estate development, but its business was largely about promotion. Glitz and glamour got the deal. Far from the institutionalized longevity of the Senate, the promoter is only as good as his last sale.

When Trump was starting out, the purest promoters were in boxing. And the brightest light in that world was Muhammad Ali, from whom Trump learned that cultural prominence and commercial success could be achieved with a rhetorical style drenched in braggadocio, insults, racial denigration, and impossible claims. Did anyone ever fact check Ali? Could he actually float like a butterfly? Was he really the prettiest?

Manhattan real estate was the means to the end of keeping Trump at the centre of attention. While Biden aged in place in the Senate, Trump kept moving toward the shifting spotlight.

When the age of the CEO superstar came with Lee Iacocca and his 1984 best-selling autobiography, Trump followed with The Art of the Deal.

When late-night television expanded beyond Johnny Carson, Trump was a regular with David Letterman.

When Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous was a TV hit, Trump was ready with the gaudy excess of Trump Tower.

When celebrity gossip spawned its own dedicated TV shows, Trump served as a source for gossip columnists about salacious bits of his own life.

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