After he was paralyzed by polio at age 6, Paul Alexander was confined for much of his life to a yellow iron lung that kept him alive. He was not expected to survive after that diagnosis, and even when he beat those odds, his life was mostly constrained by a machine in which he could…
When President Biden appeared at a last-minute news conference on Thursday night, he hoped to assure the country of his mental acuity hours after a special counsel’s report had devastatingly referred to him as a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.” Instead, a visibly angry Mr. Biden made the exact type of verbal flub…
One of Donald J. Trump’s new comedic bits at his rallies features him impersonating the current commander in chief with an over-the-top caricature mocking President Biden’s age. With droopy eyelids and mouth agape, Mr. Trump stammers and mumbles. He squints. His arms flap. He shuffles his feet and wanders laggardly across the stage. A burst…
In a 7,000-word essay for Foreign Affairs magazine published this week, Jake Sullivan, President Biden’s national security adviser, tried to sum up the state of the Middle East. “Although the Middle East remains beset with perennial challenges,” he wrote in the original version of the essay, “the region is quieter than it has been for…
Dorothy Hoffner, born in 1918, had survived both the Spanish flu and Covid pandemics, as well as her first skydiving attempt at age 100. That might explain what was on her mind before her second skydive as she prepared for a roughly 10,000-foot descent. “What are we having for dinner?” she recalled thinking. The centenarian…
In his first interview since announcing that he would seek a second term, President Biden sought to downplay concerns about his age by saying he was the most experienced person to have ever run for the presidency. “I have acquired a hell of a lot of wisdom and know more than the vast majority of…
No one can predict how a single individual will fare. The medical report the White House released last year was a summary of findings by the president’s longtime personal physician, Dr. Kevin C. O’Connor, who proclaimed him a “healthy, vigorous, 78- year-old male.” But the White House has not released underlying lab documents, as Mr.…
Mano suggests that a community bound together by its response to one crisis is better prepared for the next. Residents had not only an intimate grasp of the resources their neighborhood contained, but enough social glue that they could demonstrate collective leadership. They offer a vision of one way our communities can evolve to meet…
Questions about Mr. Biden’s fitness have nonetheless taken a toll on his public standing. In a June survey by Harvard’s Center for American Political Studies and the Harris Poll, 64 percent of voters believed he was showing that he is too old to be president, including 60 percent of respondents 65 or older. Mr. Biden’s…