Do senior Wisconsin voters think Biden and Trump are too old to serve?

Curt Reese knows he doesn’t feel quite like he used to.

Reese, a retired paper mill manager from Oshkosh, is 82 “and proud of it.” He spends plenty of time reading the newspaper or doing crosswords and Sudoku puzzles to keep his mind sharp. But other activities he once enjoyed, like gardening and world travel, are off the table as he and his wife age.

 “Just in the last few years there has been a huge difference,” Reese said of changes he’s noticed since he retired. “I physically can't do nearly what I used to do. … Mentally, the recollection isn’t like what it used to be.”

Reese isn’t running for president — but he’s in the same age bracket as the two major party candidates vying for the White House.

President Joe Biden would be 82 years old on the date of his second inauguration. Former President Donald Trump, who is destined to claim the Republican nomination, would be 78 and would break Biden’s current record as the oldest president in American history on the day of inauguration.

Both Biden and Trump have drawn significant attention to their age and mental acuity through a series of verbal flubs, and both have been dismissive of those concerns.

Researchers on aging say that campaign trail slip-ups from both candidates are not necessarily a sign of larger health problems or cognitive decline. Indeed, some older voters see age as a virtue, and push back on the idea that being old means you can’t be president.

“As you age, you develop these files of information in your brain,” said Sandra Wilke, an 81-year-old in DeForest. “It takes you sometimes a little longer to think about, ‘OK, wait a minute, I gotta go find that file, and open that file up and get the information out.’ There's nothing wrong with that, you know, just because we can't instantly respond to something.”

In Wisconsin, however, there are signs that age concerns have stuck for both candidates among voters.

In a recent Marquette University Law School Poll, 83% of those surveyed said the phrase “too old to be president” applied very or somewhat well to Biden; for Trump, that number was 56%.

Incidentally, both of those figures are higher than national polling, also conducted by Marquette, on that same issue. That’s even though the state has a higher share of voters over age 65 than the national average.

Reese is one of those voters, and he said he hasn’t yet made up his mind who he will vote for, but he hopes for a viable alternative to the two leading candidates — in large part because of their age. He’s in favor of age caps for elected officials and term limits for members of Congress.

“Some people don't know when it's time to give it up,” he said.

'Armchair gerontologists'

For Biden in particular, questions about his age have persisted.

The concerns were magnified for many on Feb. 5, when a report from special counsel Robert Hur, who was probing whether Biden should be criminally charged for his handling of classified documents, called him a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory” who struggled to remember dates related to his political service and the year his eldest son, Beau, died.

An angry Biden disputed Hur’s report shortly after it was unveiled and maintained “I know what the hell I’m doing.” Transcripts released from Biden’s interview with Hur show he remembered the date his son died but that he required a back-and-forth with a staff member to recall the year.

In 2020, a group of researchers examined publicly available health records and determined that age was not a relevant factor for either Biden or Trump and that both men, particularly Biden, had a longer-than-expected lifespan for an American man, which they found to be between 86 and 87 years.

One of those researchers, Jay Olshansky, a professor at the University of Illinois-Chicago’s school of public health and an expert on aging, noted that Hur’s report is an example of a common phenomenon: someone who isn’t an expert on health care making a judgment on aging.

“A lot of folks that watch TV and see Biden with an altered gait come to the conclusion that he looks like an old man,” Olshansky said. “Well, guess what, he is an old man. He’s 81 years old, there’s no denying that. But an altered gait is not a significant health issue and happens to many people when they get older.

“You've got a lot of armchair gerontologists drawing conclusions based on limited amounts of information.”

Olshansky noted that Biden’s physician, Kevin O’Connor, said the president “continues to be fit for duty” and declined to order any sort of cognitive test.

It’s normal to skip such a test for an 81-year-old in a regular physical unless it is requested by the patient, a physician or a family member. Republicans have argued that Biden should take some sort of cognitive exam, which Trump did during his presidency.

Wisconsin Democrats have argued the president is in fine shape.

Speaking with reporters last month, Gov. Tony Evers said he has noticed no issues when he is with Biden and that “he’s sharp.”

“Especially in that position, I don’t think it is terrible that it is someone with a little more experience,” U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan, D-town of Vermont, told WKOW in February. “I just want somebody with experience to get things done.”

Bigger issues than age

Slip-ups like those experienced by Biden are commonplace, said John Scepanski, a 73-year-old from DeForest.

“Everybody does that kind of thing,” he said. “And then the opposition grabs a hold of it, and tries to make a lot out of it.”

Mike Flaherty, who says he is going to vote in November for Biden, argued that the president’s age is often heavily covered by reporters as a point of conflict, particularly by conservative media outlets, when there are bigger issues at play.

“You'd be hard-pressed to find a candidate in either party who has the breadth and depth of experience that President Biden has,” Flaherty, a 68-year-old former newspaper reporter from McFarland, said. “Night after night on Fox News they talk about how old he is. Well, he's not that much older than Donald Trump.”

Some voters argued there has been a double standard to how Biden and Trump have been treated. The former president has been sharply critical of Biden on the campaign trail but has had his own gaffes, such as mistaking former U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for Trump’s rival for the GOP nomination, former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley.

Others say Trump’s legal troubles, including 91 felony charges spread across four indictments, are more significant than the age of either candidate.

“I don't have a problem with the age,” said Christina Bensche, a 73-year-old retired nurse and midwife who lives in DeForest. “Even if they had to walk with a walker, I wouldn't have a problem.” But if a candidate isn’t concerned with the welfare of citizens, Bensche said, “then I worry.”

Aging effects on the brain

Part of the reason memory and other cognitive functions can dip as people age is because the part of the brain responsible for those tasks — the hippocampus — shrinks over time, beginning as early as a person’s 30s or 40s.

This also affects how quickly someone can learn new skills, though there is evidence that older people can learn tasks just as effectively as younger people — they just might need a little bit more time to do so.

Research also shows that other factors, such as socioeconomic status and access to health care, can affect the severity of cognitive decline as a person ages.

People with serious cognitive decline do show signs, Olshansky said — but mixing up two cities or people isn’t one of them. Dementia is a valid concern if a person is unable to recognize friends or family members, something he said didn’t seem to be present in either candidate.

“The problem is not losing your car keys because we all will; the problem is not (struggling) to find your car in a parking lot, because we're all going to make that mistake,” he said. “The problem occurs when you can't figure out what those keys are for.”

Worries about ageism

Questions about the age of a candidate are not new. During his reelection campaign, Ronald Reagan, who at the time was 73 and the oldest president to date, famously fielded a question about his age while debating Walter Mondale in 1984.

In dismissing the concern, Reagan paraphrased the Roman scholar Cicero, saying “If it was not for the elders correcting the mistakes of the young, there would be no state.”

This resonated for some voters, who argued age is an asset.

“I would like our younger kids to learn more before we turn our leadership over to them,” said Margaret Wood, 76, of La Crosse.

But to some younger voters like Chancelor Conklin, a new crop of candidates would mean fresh ideas and someone who might better relate to the life of the 19-year-old Madison resident, who will vote for the first time.

Conklin has known church elders his whole life and has watched them age, having forgetful slip-ups or physical limitations they didn’t have when they were younger.

“Do we really want our president to be falling apart in front of our eyes?” he said. “Or do we want a younger person that's going to last for a long time and that we can actually see what they're going to accomplish.”

But to some, the rhetoric feels like ageism, something older adults say they regularly experience. Wilke recalled a time when a gate agent at the airport was surprised she used the airline’s online check-in option.

“She said ‘Oh, did your granddaughter do that for you?’” Wilke said. “I said ‘No, I did it myself.’”

She said the debate over Biden and Trump’s age stings.

“It makes me feel like I’m supposed to keep my mouth shut,” she said. “Because ‘You’re old, what do you know?’”

Olshansky, the researcher, noted that everyone ages differently and that even if a person encounters difficulties as they age, it doesn’t mean much when it comes to Biden or Trump.

He hopes the discussion can “finally lead us to understand the importance and the value of healthy aging.”

“I asked this question to my students, most of whom are in their early 20s, as to whether or not there are any benefits to growing older,” Olshansky said. “The answer I almost always get is no. They always associate aging with loss and decline, people bent over and unable to do what they did when they were younger. Yeah, guess what, there's a lot of positive changes that occur as you get older. In fact, most people prefer to be older.”

'How will history judge?'

Greg Jones acknowledges he isn’t going to run track or play basketball in the same way he did when he was younger. But the 71-year-old says his mind is as sharp as ever.

Jones, president of the Dane County NAACP, said he’s observed that age is often considered a bigger factor for candidates than policy positions that should be more important to voters.

“I would like to hear people give a little bit more reason and rationale to the statement ‘They're too old,’” Jones said. “Give me some examples. Too old to sit down and go through the budget deliberation process? Too old to work with the legislature when it comes to minimizing or avoiding a government shutdown? … Well, maybe they are, but give me some examples.”

Jones said he is personally not concerned about the age of the candidates. Ultimately, he argued, there is only one thing that matters when it comes to evaluating a president’s term in office.

“How will history judge the administration of all presidents, including the one that's elected going forward?” he said. “And whether or not they implemented policies and procedures that benefited the society in general, the members of our communities nationally, statewide and locally.

“So I think history is going to be the real judge in terms of whether or not there was an impact on that individual's administration, given their age.”

Conklin, the 19-year-old, first time voter, said that while he did have concerns about the age of both Biden and Trump, that probably won’t determine who he votes for.

He said he will focus on the issues, including their plans to improve wages and enact criminal justice reform, particularly when it comes to getting people out of prison for marijuana-related crimes.

“I don't think my decision would be more influenced by their age,” Conklin said. “I think it would be more influenced by what they can accomplish.”