Old man Ike and old man Joe

Widespread anxiety about Joe Biden's age as he approaches his re-election campaign has made me realize that I belong to a dwindling cohort of Americans who can remember living with concerns about the health of an elderly president. 

I was just a precocious twit in the late 1950s, but I remember knowing that my mother, who was an Eisenhower admirer, worried frequently about President Ike's health. She was scared of a belligerent Soviet Union and wanted the General's steady hand in charge. She greatly admired his leadership of the coalition of Allied armies that defeated Nazi Germany. She didn't ask a lot of questions that my generation might have; those came later. (Yes, she was also doubtful about Veep Richard Nixon, though probably not as much as she should have been.)

Post-presidential portrait by Richard Avedon

In fact, there was plenty to worry about in Eisenhower's health records. There was anxiety about his age at re-election in 1956; he was 66 which seemed a lot older then than it does today. He began the practice of releasing candidate health records to the public -- though he wasn't entirely candid, not revealing the severity of his infirmities.

During 1955, he suffered a heart attack from which he fairly quickly recovered; after re-election, the compromise to his heart led to a transient stroke in 1957. The National Aphasia Society, rather proudly, reports how Eisenhower dealt with his mild disability during the rest of his term.

While speaking to his secretary on November 25, 1957, Eisenhower found he could not complete his sentences. When examined he had neither motor nor sensory impairment. The diagnosis was occlusion of the left middle cerebral artery. Eisenhower, who was 67 years old and had three years remaining in his second term of office, was already taking coumadin at this time.

... After remaining in seclusion for 3 days, Eisenhower returned to work, his speech not yet back to normal. To some, the press coverage of his difficulties in this period seemed “unnecessarily savage and sadistic,” since some reporters seemed to be counting the number of goofs Eisenhower made during a press conference. But unlike the 1955 heart attack and the 1956 abdominal operation, the 1957 stroke occurred at a time when important presidential meetings were scheduled.

... His reactions to his speech difficulties were variable. Among friends he would occasionally laugh off his mistakes, but on one occasion, when he was having difficulty speaking, he said with effort “There’s nothing the matter with me, I’m perfectly all right.”

Most people knew there was something going on with Ike, but did not, I think, ever conclude that he was "too old" for his job. His approval rating was often as high as 70 percent. 

• • •

Those were different times. We tend to think they were less partisan and vicious, and maybe they were, but the country was riven by McCarthyism, a permanent hunt for "Red traitors." The Civil Rights struggle was taking center stage. Still, a president wasn't expected and forced to be nearly as forthcoming about his physical condition as he would be today. For better or worse, a mildly impaired president could count on his administration to stay its course (especially in a second term), knowing he only had to be on top of the biggest stuff. 

Ike kept us out of the shooting war in Vietnam -- he seemed to know better -- but he didn't check the war inertia that dumped his successors into the fire. He did the bare minimum in response to the Black freedom struggle then emerging.

• • •

I am prepared to believe that Joe Biden, older but far more healthy than Eisenhower, can lead another administration. He's built a sound, competent, even creative administration in the wake of the Trump mess. In these days, he'll be surrounded by noisy detractors looking for weaknesses. But also, Biden seems to have acquired more wisdom and stature as he has aged. He's used his long-acquired command of the governing process to get more wins for health care and climate sustainability than seemed possible. He's also often culturally clueless about the world in which people under 35 live; so am I.

And when it comes down to it -- in 2024, he'll be running against Donald Trump, who is no spring chicken himself and whose ideas about women and people color seem to derive from another century. No contest there. We need a president, not a petulant, racist, old man who is a wanna-be dictator.