Soup, salad and Peloton: How they keep Biden on his feet at 81
He works out five times a week, and likes weightlifting as well as playing a game of golf. As Joe Biden celebrates his 81st birthday, Alex Hannaford takes a closer look at a president who could be in office until he is 86 if he wins next year’s election
Joe Biden is very much alive and running for re-election.” That was the message from the US president’s second-in-command, Kamala Harris, at the end of October. It wasn’t the most PR-savvy response to a question from a reporter asking what would happen “should something befall Biden and he’s not able to run”. But questions like this – which all centre on Biden’s age – have not only hounded him since he was elected in 2020, but are becoming increasingly frequent in the run-up to the next presidential election in 2024.
And it’s not out of left field. When Biden turned 80 last November he became the first octogenarian ever to serve as US president. On Monday 20 November, he’ll be 81. He’s already the oldest president in US history, and if he completes a second term in the Oval Office, he’ll be 86 when that term ends. So it’s perhaps unsurprising that 77 per cent of Americans say Biden is too old to run again. And like the passage of time, it’s an issue he can’t seem to escape.
So what does it look like to have an OAP in the White House, and what does it take to keep him on the road? And, more importantly, are we right to care?
Biden is the ninth-oldest national leader in the world. The oldest is Paul Biya, the president of Cameroon, who was born in 1933 and assumed the presidency in 1982, making him the only current national leader in his nineties. In the US, there’s no age limit to run for president, but there is a floor. You can’t become the leader of the free world if you’re under 35 – presumably because the framers of the constitution decided that was the age you needed to reach in order to accomplish something of note.
While there’s no law mandating it, most US presidents disclose their health and medical records. The last time Biden’s were released to the press was in February; his personal physician, Kevin O’Connor, conducted a review of his medical history and performed a detailed physical. From this – as well as information gleaned in interviews with those surrounding him – here’s what we know.
Biden is 6ft tall, weighs 178lbs (a little under 81kg), wears contact lenses, doesn’t smoke or drink alcohol, and works out at least five days a week. In 2021, after interviewing numerous people close to the president, The Washington Post published an account of his daily schedule, which included a daily workout that often incorporated weightlifting, and noted that he regularly used a personal trainer.
He rides his bike and uses a Peloton. His lunch of choice is soup and a salad (washed down with orange Gatorade). A few years back, first lady Jill Biden revealed that his must-have staples were ketchup, peanut butter and jam, and that for dinner he liked pasta and tomato sauce. Like a lot of former presidents, he likes a round of golf (he’s a member of Wilmington Country Club in Delaware, and according to Golf Digest is tied 68th among well-known Washington DC players, with a 10 handicap).
Biden’s physical revealed that his blood pressure was 128/76 (slightly elevated), and O’Connor noted that, in the summer of 2022, Biden had suffered from an upper respiratory infection after contracting Covid-19, but that he had only ever experienced mild symptoms “consisting mostly of a deep, loose cough and hoarseness” thanks to his being fully vaccinated and double-boosted.
His doctor noted that he was being treated for non-valvular atrial fibrillation (an irregular heartbeat to you and me) and hyperlipidaemia – which is defined as too much fat, such as cholesterol or triglycerides, in your blood, but which O’Connor reported was “stable” thanks to medication. The president was also experiencing occasional symptoms of gastroesophageal reflux, typically exacerbated by meals, for which he was prescribed a regular acid blocker known as famotidine. He suffers from seasonal allergies that cause sinus congestion, but O’Connor noted that this had improved after “several sinus and nasal passage surgeries”.
Perhaps the most outwardly noticeable condition Biden has is a “stiffened gait” – evident whenever he’s walking to the podium in the Rose Garden or from Air Force One. Conservative commentators have leapt at the chance to equate this with what they say is his failing health. One, Ali Alexander, even referred to it as Biden’s “Parkinsonian walk”. But O’Connor said that, despite having “significant spinal arthritis” as well as arthritis in his foot following a fracture in 2021, Biden had undergone an “extremely detailed neurological exam”, the results of which showed no findings of any other neurological disorder.
He had several non-melanoma skin cancers removed before he assumed the presidency, and so undergoes regular surveillance for the condition. But O’Connor summarised that Biden “remains a healthy, vigorous, 80-year-old male, who is fit to successfully execute the duties of the presidency”.
And yet, the age-sniping continues. “Biden’s campaign team is on a mission to prevent him from tripping in public,” said Fox News, noting that he’d begun wearing trainers on his travels after a fall at the Air Force Academy, and that he’d started boarding Air Force One using shorter stairs to a lower door on the plane. One medical expert told the network he thought Biden was “showing signs of cognitive slowing”, while an OpEd for conservative magazine National Review demanded “an independent medical assessment of the president’s mental health”.
It’s ironic that Biden appears to be a picture of health when you consider that nearly half of all US presidents have been either overweight or obese. More than half used some kind of tobacco product – and more than half have died within a decade of leaving office. Bill Clinton liked to stop off at McDonald’s in the middle of a jog; Donald Trump drank up to 12 Diet Cokes each day, and had a penchant for Kentucky Fried Chicken; Barack Obama famously smoked cigarettes, while Ronald Reagan ate large quantities of jelly beans to help him quit smoking (in addition to showing signs of dementia as his presidential term neared its end).
John F Kennedy suffered from chronic back pain; Franklin D Roosevelt was diagnosed with polio in 1921 and used a wheelchair, but managed to hide the severity of his illness; and Woodrow Wilson suffered a stroke while in office.
All of them will have had a medical member of staff staying overnight in the White House, and whenever they travelled, a personal physician will have been riding in the motorcade. Wherever a president is, there are always several pints of blood on hand should the unthinkable happen.
There is no doubt that presidents get tired and ill, but presidential historian Alexis Coe says that in the past, the issue has been that presidents haven’t wanted to give up power easily, no matter what health issues they’ve faced. “They thought of Calvin Coolidge [who served as America’s 30th president between 1923 and 1929] as lethargic, as someone who just simply wasn’t up to the task, while ignoring the fact that while he was president his 15-year-old son got a blister that turned into sepsis, and died. After his son died, Coolidge’s weight went up and down by dramatic numbers. He was mean. He slept a lot. Then he couldn’t sleep. He went through every single phase of what we now recognise as depression, and yet that has only dawned upon biographers in the last 15 years.”
As for Biden’s health, Coe says a 50-year-old in bad shape would be a far worse choice than an 81-year-old who has slightly elevated blood pressure. “Much is made about Biden tripping, but Gerald Ford – our most athletic president, who had played professional football and was clearly in excellent shape – fell down a few times, and people loved to make a big deal out of it. They’d call him a klutz. But he just slipped.
“Biden could live to be a hundred with the same cognitive and physical functions he now enjoys, because he has access to the best medical care.”
Inexplicably, of course, there seems to be more focus right now on Biden’s age than on the numerous indictments that Trump – who, by the way, is only three years younger than Biden – is facing, including charges in Georgia that stem from alleged efforts to overturn his 2020 electoral defeat, a federal election subversion case, and a New York civil fraud trial that threatens his business empire. “If Biden is re-elected, we’re worried he’ll die in office,” Coe says. “But if Trump is re-elected, I worry our democracy will die.”
Biden’s sartorial style has also been noted as being a cut above Trump’s. This past summer, a fashion blogger was asked to assess his fashion vibe for a magazine, and concluded that he was better dressed than most in Washington, which probably came from “his age and experience wearing tailored clothing”. He also noted that Biden is one of the few politicians who wears a handkerchief in their jacket pocket, as well as penny loafers with his suits. The “bit of shoulder padding” may also help with a diminishing frame.
And while he looks increasingly frail, perhaps Biden should borrow a phrase Reagan used in a presidential debate against his Democratic opponent Walter Mondale in 1984. Addressing questions of his age and whether he was mentally fit for office, Reagan, who at the time was already the oldest president in history, said: “I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent’s youth and inexperience.”
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