Biden and Trump; setting records for oldest presidential contest ever

Halfway around the world, President Joe Biden 81, and former President Donald J Trump 77, as expected clinched their respective parties’ nominations for president. President Trump is now just one year shy of the age when Ronald Reagan was, when he exited office in 1989. 

Ronald Reagan ended his second term, somewhat battered by the Iran-Contra Arms scandal involving the sale of US arms to Iran which was prohibited by law and funding the Contras guerillas who were fighting the Sandinistas, left wing revolutionaries in power in Nicaragua. Reagan’s popularity dipped but he left office with record 60% approval ratings, just 30 percent of Americans disapproved of him. His movie star looks, and optimism, “Its morning again in America” carried him through. 

Further dissections of America’s oldest president then, however, show that his faculties started to fade early in his presidency after a failed assassination attempt in 1981. Pope John Paul II, similarly was never the same after a similar attempt on his life in the same year.  

Five  years after leaving office, Reagan announced he had Alzheimers a debilitating disease and had begun the long farewell. He lived until age 93, dying in 2004. He is still viewed by many as a successful president. 
His first victory was over a 55-year-old incumbent Jimmy Carter. In his campaign for re-election, he mocked his opponent Ted Mondale, stating he didn’t want to take advantage of his opponents’ youthful inexperience.
Closer to home, Nelson Mandela, hero of the fight against apartheid, and South Africa’s first black President shortly after inauguration made clear he would not run for re-election. 

When he visited Harvard where I was a student, he made fun of his age, saying many of the students had simply come to look at an 80-year-old. By his side was his new wife, Graca Machel, a former first lady of Mozambique.  
Fast forward to 2024, Americans are having the same historical animosity towards older candidates for office but continue electing them in record numbers. 

In 1996, Republican Presidential candidate Bob Dole, then only age 72, struggled to connect with older voters. It was said that senior citizens reached for the remote each time they turned on TV and sent Bill Clinton back to the White House. 

In the story of age, while both Trump and Biden show flubs of aging, Biden has been at the receiving end, older, and what scares most people he will be 86 at the end of his second presidential term. 
Last week at the State of the Union Address, a big speech in prime-time, Biden delivered red meat eschewing some of the sceptics, looking for any flaws in the manner expected of a man his age. 
In Uganda, in 2017, we chose a different path, to remove yet another provision of eligibility for election to president, the 30-year minimum and 75 age maximum. 

Rowdy scenes in Uganda’s Parliamentary Chamber were beamed to the world. The person next to the incumbent himself who claimed the most credit for removing the age limit, Former Speaker Rebecca Kadaga saw her time in the limelight vanquished when the beneficiary of the change did not support her for re-election as Speaker. 

Her first successor Jacob Oulanyah did not last long. He was only in office for months before dying of cancer. His second successor Anita Annet Among has rocked the front and back ages, and the entire internet. Published rumours, Uganda is a global first in this aspect, the old man may want Rebecca Kadaga now age 67 back in the Speaker’s chair.  

Maybe Kadaga will help write term limits again in the constitution. Maybe there will be another way. Unfortunately, the Americans who would have paid our legal consultants top dollar to study such a provision with a view of writing it into their constitution have nothing to review and write our terms of reference. 

 Mr Ssemogerere is an Attorney-At-Law and an Advocate. [email protected]