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WASHINGTON: Joe Biden, the oldest person to win the US presidency, will celebrate his 78th birthday on Friday.
If he ran and was re-elected in 2024, he would be 86 at the end of a second term in 2029.
With two months to go until he receives the keys to the Oval Office, Washington insiders are already wondering: Will he be president for a single term?
Throughout his campaign against Donald Trump, Biden, a “lion of American history,” according to his former boss, Barack Obama, has been deliberately vague about his future plans.
When asked by ABC News in August if the idea of serving for eight years was on his internal radar, Biden replied, “Absolutely.”
But before that, in April, at a fundraising event, he told donors that he saw himself as a “transitional candidate,” a phrase that drew attention and fueled speculation.
Was he trying to say that he was in the best position to close the book on Trumpism, due to his decades of political experience and empathic nature, but would then pass the torch on to a new generation of Democrats in 2024?
Needless to say, many of the party’s bright new faces weren’t even alive when Biden was first elected to the United States Senate in 1972.
Or was he just talking about transition in a broader sense, not wanting to offer any perspective on the future?
A few days after securing Trump’s presidency, Biden’s sister Valerie, who has played a key role in his political career but generally remains out of the public eye, expressed confidence that he would seek re-election.
So what did you mean by “transitional candidate” then?
She told “Axios on HBO” that he was “transitional in the sense that he is bringing all these young people and bringing us back (so that) we are not a divided country.”
Above all, one thing is clear: Biden is trying to maintain a maximum of political capital in the future.
No one can run for the White House and explicitly say it’s for one term, after all. That would weaken their position and open the door, too fast and too much, to an all-out battle of succession within the party.
‘Sense of legitimacy’
For presidential historian Julian Zelizer, a professor at Princeton University, “there is no value” that Biden clarifies his plans too soon.
“In this age of polarization, it is necessary to use every piece of muscle, including the threat of re-election, to move the bills,” Zelizer told AFP.
In the history of the United States, the number of presidents who did not run for a second term is relatively low.
James Polk, who served from 1845 to 1849, campaigned on the fact that he would not run again, and he kept his promise. But the politics of the mid-19th century bear little resemblance to the circus in Washington today.
The only example in modern American history is Lyndon B. Johnson, who was catapulted into the White House in 1963 when John F Kennedy was assassinated.
Johnson easily won his own term in the 1964 election against Republican Barry Goldwater, but in March 1968, with the United States weary of the Vietnam War and progressive Democrats challenging him, he said he would not run again.
For many observers, Johnson withdrew because he faced certain defeat.
But his decision to leave the White House after six years in power was nonetheless “Pearl Harbor in politics,” in the words of a Democratic lawmaker from his native Texas.
Beyond the thirst for power and the prestige of office, why are American leaders so hell-bent on staying for eight years?
“The second term gives the president a sense of legitimacy,” Zelizer said. “It is also a time to pursue difficult political initiatives without electoral pressure.”
‘Damn, you are old’
Biden, of course, knows that he is in a delicate situation.
In the fall of 2018, even before he announced his third presidential race, he acknowledged to an audience in a Michigan speech that his age was “a totally legitimate thing to raise.”
“I think it’s totally appropriate for people to look at me and say if I were to run for office again, ‘Well, damn, you’re old,’” he said.
“Well, chronologically, I’m old,” he added, making it clear that he believed age was just a number, and he’s still energetic and intellectually fast.
One thing is clear: When he takes office on January 20, Biden’s Republican rivals, and contenders for the throne in his own Democratic Party, will be listening carefully to what he has to say on the matter.
They will be waiting for the slightest hint of a possible retirement from the man who, in November 2022, will become the first sitting president in his 80s in American history.
