{"id":17309,"date":"2023-08-31T06:34:57","date_gmt":"2023-08-31T11:34:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/?p=17309"},"modified":"2023-08-31T06:35:24","modified_gmt":"2023-08-31T11:35:24","slug":"biden-privately-admitted-feeling-tired-amid-concerns-about-his-age-book-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/?p=17309","title":{"rendered":"Biden privately admitted feeling \u2018tired\u2019 amid concerns about his age, book says"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Amid relentless debate about whether at 80 Joe Biden is\u00a0too old\u00a0to be president or to complete an effective second term, an eagerly awaited book on his time in the White House reports that Biden has privately admitted to feeling \u201ctired\u201d, even as it describes his vast political experience as a vital asset.
\u201cHis advanced years were a hindrance, depriving him of the energy to cast a robust public presence or the ability to easily conjure a name,\u201d Franklin Foer writes in\u00a0The Last Politician: Inside Joe Biden\u2019s White House and the Struggle for America\u2019s Future.
\u201cIt was striking that he took so few morning meetings or presided over so few public events before 10am. His public persona reflected physical decline and time\u2019s dulling of mental faculties that no pill or exercise regime can resist.
\u201cIn private, he would occasionally admit that he felt tired.\u201d
Foer does not cite a source for Biden\u2019s reported private remarks but his book,\u00a0according\u00a0to its publisher, Penguin Random House, is based on \u201cunparalleled access to the tight inner circle of advisers who have surrounded Biden for decades\u201d.
The Last Politician will be published in the US next week. On Tuesday, as the Atlantic published\u00a0an excerpt\u00a0on the withdrawal from Afghanistan, Politico\u00a0noted\u00a0tight security around the release and anxiety in the White House.
The Guardian obtained a copy.
Biden\u2019s age has been a constant of coverage since the former senator and vice-president entered the race to face Donald Trump in 2020. At 77, Biden beat Trump convincingly and became the oldest president ever elected. If Biden wins a second term next year, and completes four years in power, he will be 86 when he steps down.
Republican candidates to face Biden have relentlessly focused on his age, with rightwing pundits piling in \u2013 despite the fact the clear Republican frontrunner, Trump, is 77 years old himself.
But public polling has long showed concern about Biden\u2019s age among Democratic voters. This week, the Associated Press and the\u00a0Norc Center\u00a0for Public Affairs\u00a0showed\u00a077% of respondents (89% of Republicans and 69% of Democrats) saying Biden was too old to be effective if re-elected.
In the same poll, only 51% (and just 29% of Republicans) said Trump\u2019s age would be a problem if he returned to the Oval Office.
Foer,\u00a0a former editor of the New Republic, a progressive magazine, does not shy from the issue. But he does stress how Biden\u2019s massive political experience \u2013 he won his US Senate seat in Delaware in 1972, chaired the Senate judiciary and foreign relations committees and was vice-president to Barack Obama from 2009 to 2017 \u2013 has given him unique strengths in the White House.
Citing the Inflation Reduction Act and other attempts to address the climate crisis, Foer says Biden is not guilty of governing in the short term \u201cbecause [he] will only inhabit the short term\u201d, a failing of older politicians.
In something of a backhanded compliment, Foer writes that Biden has sometimes muffed public remarks not because of the challenges of age, but because of \u201cindiscipline and indecision\u201d seen throughout his career.
In the same passage in which he reports Biden\u2019s admission to being tired, meanwhile, Foer says the president\u2019s \u201cwartime leadership\u201d, regarding supporting Ukraine in its fight against the invading Russian army, \u201cdrew on his weathered instincts and his robust self-confidence\u201d.
Regarding Ukraine, Foer writes, \u201cthe advantages of having an older president were on display. He wasn\u2019t just a leader of the coalition, he was the West\u2019s father figure, whom foreign leaders could call for advice and look to for assurance.
\u201cIt was his calming presence and his strategic clarity that helped lead the alliance to such an aggressive stance, which stymied authoritarianism on its front lines.
\u201cHe was a man for his age.\u201d
theguardian<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Amid relentless debate about whether at 80 Joe Biden is\u00a0too old\u00a0to be president or to complete an effective second term, an eagerly awaited book on his time in the White House reports that Biden has privately admitted to feeling \u201ctired\u201d, even as it describes his vast political experience as a vital asset.\u201cHis advanced years were […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":17311,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1154],"tags":[7747,1169,22048],"class_list":["post-17309","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-trending","tag-age","tag-biden","tag-tired"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17309","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17309"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17309\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17312,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17309\/revisions\/17312"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/17311"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17309"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17309"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17309"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}