President Joe Biden grew testy the other day.
He was angry about special counsel Robert Hur’s report regarding the president’s handling of classified documents after he left the vice presidency.
On the surface, the report should have been good news for Biden. Hur concluded that Biden, unlike former President Donald Trump, should not be subjected to prosecution. Hur listed the material differences between Biden’s and Trump’s situations — the facts that Biden turned the documents over as soon as they were discovered and cooperated with investigators at every stage heading that list — while explaining his reasoning.
But Hur also said that Biden, because of his age and basic geniality, would make for a sympathetic witness in his own defense. The special counsel said the president would come across as an elderly, well-meaning man who struggled with memory lapses.
In other words, not the sort of person a jury would want to convict. Most people don’t want to throw grandpa in the slammer just because he’s lost a step or two.
The references to the president’s age set Biden off.
He fumed at a hastily arranged speech/press conference that his memory was fine and that the special counsel was out of line to ask him certain questions and suggest he was old.
Biden was wrong about that.
I understand why the president is sensitive about references to his age — particularly the assertion that he could not remember the date his son Beau died — but Hur had good reason to ask the questions and note the answers.
The law governing special counsel investigations says the special counsel shall — as in, must — submit a report explaining why he or she has decided not to prosecute.
Because the people who are the subjects of special counsel investigations are figures of national import, decisions not to prosecute should be accompanied by the reasoning behind that choice. The goal is to be transparent.
In this case, Hur was saying that, especially without any smoking gun, taking this case to court would look like the prosecutors were trying to bully an old man.
Joe Biden and his allies may not like Hur’s allusions to the president’s age, but they were a legitimate — and required — part of the special counsel’s report.
This brings us to the second reason for Biden’s pique about the report’s inclusion of his senior-citizen status.
Politicians always struggle to accept this fundamental truth — the voters, not the politicians, are the ones who get to decide what is important in an election.
The fact is that many, perhaps even most, of the people who will cast their ballots in November have concerns about re-electing an octogenarian. They worry that Biden simply will not be up to the strains of the most difficult and demanding job on earth.
Biden and his team can continue to grow irritated if they want to whenever someone mentions he’s seen more than a few springtimes. But snapping at people when they acknowledge a concern is rarely an effective way to put that concern to rest.
If it were, Donald Trump’s repeated temper tantrums regarding voter concerns about his basic honesty and respect for both decency and the rule of law would have brought the nation’s suburban voters back into his camp.
They haven’t. And they won’t, because rage fests don’t reassure people.
Trump’s constant fulminations about the weaponization of the justice system may fire up the people who already support him, but they do nothing to persuade others to move his way.
Similarly, Biden’s snappishness about any allusion to his age may persuade anew the president’s supporters that he’s being treated unfairly, but, if anything, his grousing reaffirms the doubts of those who are on the fence.
One of the benefits of age is supposed to be maturity, the development of a sense of perspective and an accompanying emotional discipline.
These are important qualities for anyone to possess, but they are essential for leaders. For presidents.
Joe Biden’s never going to convince people that he’s still 35.
But there is a way the president could put to rest at least some concerns about his age. He could start acting it.
John Krull is director of Franklin College’s Pulliam School of Journalism and publisher of TheStatehouseFile.com, a news website powered by Franklin College journalism students, where this commentary originally appeared. The opinions expressed by the author do not reflect the views of Franklin College. Send comments to [email protected].
