Veteran pundits debate merits of veteran presidential candidates
“The country can do better than an 82-year-old and a 78-year-old,” Karl Rove said.
Two long-established political pundits got in a heated exchange Sunday as to whether President Joe Biden should run again — and, by extension, whether America needs fresh faces in the presidential race.
“The country can do better than an 82-year-old and a 78-year-old and needs to do better when we face the kind of challenges we face,” said longtime GOP strategist Karl Rove during a panel discussion on “Fox News Sunday.”
Political analyst Juan Williams responded in defense of Biden: “Let me quote the great Joe Biden: Compare me not to the Almighty, but to the alternative.” Williams argued that as long as Trump is the GOP frontrunner, Democrats will unify behind Biden as the nominee no matter what they think of him now.
Trump, 76, is already running for the Republican nomination, and Biden, 80, is expected to launch his candidacy Tuesday. Either would be the oldest person elected president in American history, breaking the record set by Biden in 2020.
Recent polling suggests that many Americans are not happy with either candidate. NBC News, for instance, released a poll Sunday showing that 70 percent of all Americans (including 51 percent of Democrats) don’t want Biden to run again in 2024. The same poll showed that 60 percent of all Americans don’t want Trump to run. Those numbers are largely consistent with what other polls have indicated in recent months.
Rove said there was “deep concern” about Biden’s ability to serve another term in the White House, and said the president’s performance during a visit last week to Ireland was problematic. “Go to the videotape. It is painful,” Rove said.
In defense of Biden, Williams pointed to former President Ronald Reagan, a Republican who ran for his second term at age 73. “He won in a landslide,” Williams said. Rove scoffed at that comparison.
When cutting to a commercial break after some cross-talk between the two, host Shannon Bream quipped, “There will be arm wrestling on this side of the table. That’s pay-per-view though.”
For the record, Williams is 69 years old and Rove is 72.