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Visually, he has difficulty moving, even though he sometimes runs and rides a bicycle, he often confuses names and terms, years and centuries, numbers and sizes, political figures of the past and present, his eyesight often fails, and he finds it difficult to find the right words. Speaking, despite his own admission that he is no longer as fresh as he once was, the eighty-two-year-old Joe Biden is (still) the Democratic candidate for the most prestigious state office, the President of the United States. Almost by definition, the position of the most powerful first person in the world requires a different image: the executive functions that belong to the president require freshness, a combination of mental, physical and other strengths that together represent the personal abilities of the candidate himself. Although Biden’s energy deficit has previously been regularly displayed in public – high-level gaffes, hilarious mistakes, bizarre gestures – the recent debate with Donald Trump almost completely exposed it.
Public judgments were ruthless: Russian media predicted disaster before the debate, while China said Biden had completely failed in the media reality show, reminding us that the American electorate is dominated by widespread apathy and dissatisfaction with both candidates. Israeli media described him as weak, and Latin American media described him as confused. The British British media The Economist put a walker for the elderly and infirm on its cover, and the Sun even coined the term “Joe-matozan” to compare his condition to a coma. Germany’s Bild wished him a good night and hinted at the rapid end of his political career. The diplomatic community was excited but handed the ball to the Democrats to wonder how (if at all) they would solve the problem.
Continuing to support Biden seems very risky, as changes in public opinion and preliminary polls give Trump a cautious advantage, which fortunately even increased after the unsuccessful assassination attempt. Finding a new candidate in a very short time – less than five months until the November 5 election – violates the basic assumptions of presidential campaigns and is a huge challenge for the Democratic Party. President Biden’s position is hard, saying that only “God Almighty” can convince him to give up the campaign. However, he did not specify whether the superiors might try to do so by giving him some obvious signs.
The example of Biden, a politician who pretended to win political power in his old age, is not an isolated one: there is a logical but often strange connection between politics and age. Since the ancient Greeks, old age has been considered the ideal age for engaging in public affairs, especially politics. This view, also expounded by Plato and Aristotle, comes down to the fact that old age is the only appropriate time to deal with public affairs, because the elderly have fewer passions and therefore fewer possibilities for dishonorable work and all kinds of tricks. Stylistically, a more mature age also means a more mature state management, more responsible, without violent swings – continuity and a permanent status quo.
Today, the political zealot ideology that completely prevents many young people from even minimal political activity and encourages them to boycott elections is deeply embedded in our typical patterns of political behavior. Once upon a time, kings and monarchs of all kinds were born to rule over others and to control the lives of their subjects for life. Similar models have been adopted only in authoritarian regimes and societies characterized by ethnic diversity. Even in societies that have gone through various stages of democratization and at least developed to some extent, political elders are still valued, and in fact, those who are colloquially called the “deep state” prefer similar candidates, and their reactions are predictable and follow predetermined patterns. .
While older people are generally marginalized, with poor social and other status, often terrible – Simone de Bivouac says that “there is no place for them on earth” – in the politics of the elderly, the situation is completely different. The desire for personal protagonist certainly adorns Joe Biden to a certain extent, and, if we look at his political participation, he has the right to do so, an indicator of a possessive attitude towards political functions that simply does not know how to retreat when the time comes. It is in this context that the Italian psychoanalyst and prolific writer Massimo Recalcati argues, in his work for the Italian newspaper La Repubblica, that Biden is the symbol of all politics that cannot retreat because it is possessive of functions.
While the art of exiting public office is almost non-existent in almost all democracies around the world – we suspect that President Biden will be an exception, and that political, public and social institutions prefer such a candidate – the public sphere has created new anti-establishment policies of which Trump is the representative. They are charismatic, attractive to many, they oscillate between being funny and vulgar, sometimes they channel criticism well, sometimes not. While the world institutions see them as a threat to democracy, the wider masses see them as the true expression of the will of the people, who finally have their own representatives in the form of unique leaders. If Trump wins the US election – and he is currently doing very well, especially on the wave of Biden’s incompetence and failed assassination attempts – then it will be less a victory of a unique political actor and more an erosion of the traditional political order that he embodies. Joe himself is almost destined to be an anti-establishment leader to replace him, even if he is of similar age.
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