The Age Issue

Our most recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics. The 2024 race has begun.

 Associated Press:

Three-fourths of US adults say Biden is too old for a second term

A new AP-NORC poll finds most Democrats say Joe Biden (age 80) and Donald Trump (77) are each too old for another term, while Republicans tend to say Biden is too old, but not Trump.

Percent who say the candidate is too old to effectively serve another 4-year term as president:

Biden

Trump

U.S. adults

77%

51%

Democrats

69%

71%

Independents

74%

48%

Republicans

89%

28%

Results are based on interviews with 1,165 U.S. adults conducted Aug. 10-14, 2023. The margin of error is ±3.8 percentage points for the full sample.Source: AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research

Nikki Haley goes there:

The truth is: A vote for Joe Biden is a vote for President Kamala Harris. pic.twitter.com/oFSSpu2ZSN

— Nikki Haley (@NikkiHaley) August 27, 2023

My post from 2008: 

Last week, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman quoted Adlai Stevenson as warning of “Nixonland” – “a land of slander and scare.” Ironically, a vivid example of scare tactics came from Stevenson’s own lips at the end of the 1956 campaign. Crudely exploiting President Eisenhower’s heart attack, he tried to frighten voters with the prospect that Vice President Nixon would soon succeed him. “And distasteful as this matter is, I must say bluntly that every piece of scientific evidence we have, every lesson of history and experience, indicates that a Republican victory tomorrow would mean that Richard M. Nixon would probably be President of this country within the next four years.” Lest anybody miss the point, he added: “I recoil at the prospect of Mr. Nixon as custodian of this nation’s future, as guardian of the hydrogen bomb…”

Of course, Richard Nixon did become president twelve years later, and undertook landmark arms talks with the Soviet Union. President Eisenhower lived to watch his inauguration on television. Stevenson did not. He had died in 1965 – of a heart attack.

Waste, Fraud, and Abuse

In his address to Congress, President Obama asserted that "most of this plan can be paid for by finding savings within the existing health care system, a system that is currently full of waste and abuse."

For decades, however, presidents have been waging war on waste and declaring progress.

• Dwight Eisenhower: "The strong expansion of the economy, coupled with a constant care for efficiency in Government operations and an alert guard against controllable waste and duplication, has brought us to a prospective balance between income and expenditure.
• John F. Kennedy: "The notable progress made by the Department of Defense in reducing costs and eliminating waste is typical of the government-wide effort to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of our operations."
• Lyndon Johnson: "We are cutting waste where we find it. We are cutting inefficiency where we can prove it. We are cutting out the nonessentials so we can better support what is essential."
• Richard Nixon: "Our search for waste has led us into every nook and cranny of the bureaucracy. "
• Gerald Ford: "I am shaking up and shaking out inefficiency and waste wherever I find it."
• Jimmy Carter: "One of my major commitments has been to restore public faith in our Federal government by cutting out waste and inefficiency. In the past four years, we have made dramatic advances toward this goal, many of them previously considered impossible to achieve."
• Ronald Reagan: "[W]e launched an all-out campaign against fraud, waste and abuse at the Federal level."
• George H.W. Bush: "And I sent Congress my first line-item rescissions, cutting $3.6 billion in unneeded wasteful spending These rescissions will serve notice to Congress that the days of wasteful spending are over."
• Bill Clinton: "Medicare fraud and waste are more than an abuse of the system; they’re an abuse of the taxpayer. By overbilling, charging for phony procedures, and selling substandard supplies, Medicare cheats cost taxpayers hundreds of millions a year. That’s why we’ve assigned more Federal prosecutors and FBI agents than ever to fight this kind of fraud, and why we’ve invested in new tools to investigate and prosecute these crimes. All told, our efforts have prevented the wasteful spending of an estimated $50 billion, and aggressive enforcement has recovered nearly $1.6 billion for the Medicare Trust Fund."
• George W. Bush: "Fought health care fraud and waste by cutting wasteful spending out of the Medicare and Medicaid programs. The Medicare bill that the President signed will cut wasteful spending and save seniors and taxpayers an estimated $20 billion over the next decade."