Joe Biden is currently 81 years old and will turn 86 in office if he wins a second term and survives four more years on the job.
Not a very promising prospect. And the concern about Biden's advancing years is heightened by aides who say that the president is oblivious to his age.
Aides apparently roll their eyes when Biden says something like, "I feel so much younger than my age." Some believe Biden has no clue how old he comes across.
The aides claim that Biden often pushes to do more travel and events than they think he should. This is where Biden's wife Jill steps in and tries to get her husband to dial it back.
She often works to get him as much rest as possible and to improve his diet.
This dynamic between Jill and her husband's team goes back to the end of his vice presidency, when he maintained a robust schedule into his early 70s, as he also dealt with the illness and death of his son Beau.
"Joe's working too hard," Jill would tell Biden's then-chief of staff, Steve Ricchetti, Joe Biden recalled in his memoir, "Promise Me, Dad." "He's exhausted. He's not sleeping. It's going to kill him."
Biden wrote that "the two of them would conspire to get me to ease off for a while."
A White House official told Axios that the Bidens keep "an eye on one another's schedules for the sake of balance — and they are far from the only couple in the administration who does that."
Nancy Reagan often intervened in making her husband's schedule, including consulting an astrologist occasionally before he scheduled an event outside of Washington. Reagan had been the target of an assassin once and Nancy needed a lot of reassurance about his safety.
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Does Biden see his limitations? He may be rejecting the reality of his age, which would be a huge problem.
He has shown frustration with some people's perception that he is too old to be commander-in-chief. "With regard to age, I can't even say, I guess, how old I am, I can't even say the number. It doesn't register with me," he said in April.
Most voters — but not as many — have similar concerns about likely GOP nominee Trump, 77. Unlike Biden, Trump has been reluctant to release much information about his health.
Media coverage has frustrated the White House and Biden campaign officials, who believe the focus on his age has contributed to voters' concerns.
It appears that some aides in the Biden White House are willing to express their concerns about their boss's inability to accept his limitations due to age. But most aides are trying to frame the Biden White House as a high-energy, frenetic place where Biden outpaces his aides and has to be reined in by his wife.
Which reality do you think is closer to being true?
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