A survey conducted by NBC News in the Spring of 2023 found that “Substantial majorities” of Americans did not want President Joe Biden nor former President Donald Trump to seek reelection in 2024. The candidates’ performance in the initial presidential debate of the fall election season did not do anything to allay the public’s concerns the survey revealed as it relates to age.

During the debate, both candidates exhibited behavior that is common in the elderly. The eighty-one-year-old president who the Special Counsel described as a “well-meaning, elderly man,” stuttered, mumbled his sentences, and in a couple of instances seemed at a loss for words. His seventy-eight-year-old opponent was not any better. Sounding like a looped audio reel, in his stereotypical get off my yard angry manner, he repeated non-sensical diatribes, over and over again.

Americans have great empathy for seniors. Still, the debate evidenced the power images have in shaping views. In the past, the aging of presidents was accepted as a natural occurrence. Believing that the stress of the office ages presidents at an abnormal pace, reactions to images of aging presidents were mostly mild and barely registered in the public domain. Now, more and more voters, political pundits and stakeholders are seeing the physical toll and cognitive challenges posed by age as serious liabilities and are raising doubts about an elderly person’s capacity to lead the nation. The doubts are exacerbated by the fact both the President and the former President are beyond the 75-year life expectancy for white males (CDC National Center for Health Statistics).

Technology has made the aging of presidents easier to document. Pictures and videos of presidents can be accessed instantly via smartphones, social media, and traditional communication platforms. The ubiquity of images has made comparisons of how a president looks at the beginning and the end of his tenure possible. Abraham Lincoln was the first president photographed multiple times. During his four years in office, one hundred and thirty photos enabled a comparison of the noticeable impact managing the Civil War had on his appearance. Similarly, eighty years later, a comparison of photos of fifty-one-year-old Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) in his first year in office with photos in his last year shows him appearing older than his actual age of sixty-three.

Images made evident that Lincoln was physically spent and FDR was not well as they sought their final term as president. Like Lincoln, Roosevelt led the country in a time of crisis, through the Great Depression and the World War that freed Europe and the Pacific Rim from the horrors perpetrated by fascist dictators, Hideki Tojo, Benito Mussolini, and Adolph Hitler. Also like Lincoln, Roosevelt died within weeks of being sworn into his last term. In short, whatever concerns may exist about a President, Americans should know that eight have died while in office, and one has resigned. And, in every instance, the order of succession as specified in the Constitution that the office passes to the vice president has functioned as designed.

In the time millennials came into being, from 1981 to 1996, three individuals took the presidential oath. The average age of the Republicans sworn in was sixty-nine years of age, and the average age of the Democrats was forty-eight. Since 2001, the year the first surge of millennials became eligible to vote, four persons have taken the presidential oath, two Republicans and two Democrats. The Republicans averaged sixty-one years of age when sworn in, while the Democrats averaged fifty-nine. Overall, in the US, the median age at the start of a president’s first term is fifty-six for a Republican and fifty-five for a Democrat. The average age of presidents who served before cameras were common, and were not affiliated with either modern-day major political party is fifty-eight. Historically, only three presidents have been 70 years old or older while in office, Republicans Reagan and Trump, and Democrat Biden (POTUS.com).

Perhaps, the age data juxtaposition and U.S. Census Bureau population estimates that show millennials have passed boomers as the nation’s largest living adult generation (Pew Research) and the growing GenZ may explain the NBC Survey findings and the reaction to the debate by many reporters, political analysts, and voters whose grandparents or great-grandparents may be as old as Biden and Trump.

Niccolò Machiavelli, the Florentine political theorist and diplomat who lived during the Renaissance observed in his political treatise The Prince that the masses make political determinations with their eyes. Five-hundred years later, as it relates to the Biden or Trump option, watching the debate made it clear, in different ways, that their best days mentally and physically are behind them. Approximately twenty-four days after the debate, President Biden conceded as much and in “the best interest… of the country” courageously and honorably ended his candidacy.

There are no signs that the other major party candidate will do the same.