The age question for presidential candidates isn’t new. President Ronald Reagan answered it in 1984 with a pledge to resign if he became impaired. At 81 years old, President Joe Biden is facing a similar question: Is he too old to run for reelection?
The answer depends on who you talk to.
Dr. David Coon is the director of the Center for Innovation in healthy and resilient aging at the Edson College of Nursing and Health Innovation at Arizona State University. Coon would tell you ageism is alive and well in this country.
"And it's not just about politics, obviously, we see it in a variety of different walks of life," he said.
Coon says aging is about gains and losses.
"While speed of processing, processing information and responding tends to slow with age, there are gains," said Coon. "And those gains are things like invaluable lived experience, or it's about the ability to see things from multiple perspectives to solve a problem."
Biden has insisted he’s not backing down, saying he’s the candidate who beat Trump, before and will do so again. Trump is 78 years old.
