WASHINGTON — He turned 198. And just under 103 years old. “Try to be 110,” he joked. Once he was even 270 years old. Still, he appears to be 29.
Kidding aside — as 80-year-old President Joe Biden likes to say — it’s been around for a long time.
Over the past two weeks, Biden has made jokes about his age more often than usual, according to an NBC News analysis of his remarks.
He dropped a version of the punchline — he’s old and he knows it — at gun safety and international diplomacy events, at fundraising campaigns and in an abortion rights speech. . The most direct approach, as Biden ramps up his re-election campaign, is a shift from how he typically tries to shed light on his age: by noting that he’s “been around a long time.”
It also comes as voters increasingly express concern that Biden will serve in the White House.
A recent NBC News poll found that 68% of registered voters have major or moderate concerns that Biden has the mental and physical health to be president. The oldest president in American history, who would be 86 at the end of a second term, Biden knows he cannot ignore the problem, aides said.
As the president’s 80th birthday approached in November, White House officials began looking for ways to humorously downplay the number, according to a former Biden White House official. The remarkable milestone has invited further media scrutiny of Biden’s age and inside the West Wing has launched in earnest a more deliberate strategy to address it.
“Playing on age allows him to both possess the benefits of experience and humorously dispel any doubts about his physical condition,” the former manager said.
The president took the self-deprecating humor approach after discussions with aides and allies about how best to try to neutralize his most glaring political weakness, a Biden adviser said, given that it’s is something he cannot change.
Most of the recent age jokes the president has made were unscripted, the adviser said, additions to prepared remarks Biden makes on the fly when he senses an opportunity to lighten the public’s mood. .
“I know I don’t look that old,” Biden joked at a June 16 event on gun violence. “I’m just under 103.”
White House officials say the president’s dossier answers questions about his age.
“No president has ever come to work with more experience, and President Biden has leveraged that experience in a record of accomplishments few presidents have matched,” said the White House communications director, Ben LaBolt, in a statement, asked about Biden’s jokes about his age. .
Biden’s use of his age as a punchline appears to have accelerated since June 13, when he told attendees at a White House event for US diplomats that a friend of his had told him to go. respond by trying “to link age and wisdom”.
“I know I look like I’m only 29,” Biden said at the event, prompting laughter from the crowd. “But I’ve been here a long time.”
Since then, the president has deployed various versions of the light tactic. He has used it most often at campaign fundraisers when addressing wealthy Democratic donors without the gaze of news cameras.
“A lot of you guys have been helping me for a long, long time,” Biden said last week at a campaign fundraiser in Atherton, Calif. Then he called out a longtime influential Democratic donor in the audience, saying, “I go back 217 years, to Joe Cotchett.”
Jokes about the president’s age are always laughable, as transcripts of his remarks show. And he often returns to the subject in question with a single line, “all joking aside”.
“I know I’m 198,” Biden told abortion rights activists last Friday as he took executive action to protect access to contraception. “But joking aside.”
Last week, declaring that he knows as much about American foreign policy as anyone, including Henry Kissinger, Biden explained: “That’s what I’ve done all my life – for the past 270 last years.”
It’s the longest Biden appears to have jokingly done, although at a Social Security and Medicare event in February he said he’d served in the US Senate for 270 years, which would have put it at 299.
While he has repeatedly recalled since entering the White House that he was 29 when he was first elected to public office, the younger Biden seems to have made himself a bit older. . “I’m 34,” he joked at a recent fundraiser in Connecticut, which, of course, wouldn’t make him old enough to be president.
Often, Biden will use his line about being around a long time to point out something about American politics that he finds highly unusual, or particularly infuriating. At a recent fundraiser, he mentioned Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala.’s outfit on military promotions, for example. “I don’t remember this happening before. And I’ve been around. I know I don’t look like I’ve been there,” he said with a laugh. “But I’ve been around. I’ve been here a long time.
Biden also made light of his age to show empathy. “Many of you are tired,” he said at the June 16 event of repeatedly facing acts of gun violence. “I get it. Try being 110 and start over.
After the laughter and applause subsided, he added, “Jokes aside, a lot of people are frustrated.
Biden is not the first politician to try to shed light on his age. Former President Ronald Reagan and Republican presidential candidates Bob Dole and John McCain did the same as they faced younger opponents.
“Government spending control isn’t just about Republicans or Democrats,” McCain said during an appearance on “Saturday Night Live.” “It’s about being able to look your children in the eye. Or in my case, my children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, great-great-grandchildren and great-great-great-grandchildren, the youngest of whom are nearing retirement.
McCain was 71, while his general election opponent, Barack Obama, was still in his 40s. Dole, 73, ran against Bill Clinton, 50, in 1996.
“My cholesterol is better than Clinton. My weight is better than Clinton. My blood pressure is better than Clinton. But I’m not going to make health an issue in this campaign,” Dole once joked.
Reagan, 73, joked during a debate with Democratic candidate Walter Mondale, who was 56, “I’m not going to exploit my opponent’s youth and inexperience for political gain.”
Biden’s political dynamic is a bit different. There is hardly a big age gap between him and his 2020 rival and potential 2024 opponent, Donald Trump, who is 77. Still, White House officials often complain that Biden is more scrutinized for his age than Trump. In the recent NBC News poll, 55% of registered voters said they had major or moderate concerns that Trump had the mental and physical health to be president, compared to 68% who felt the same about Biden.
Biden also mixes a strategy of deliberate spontaneity — peppering his routine remarks with off-the-cuff jokes about his age — and poking fun at himself at high-profile events or speeches where he’s expected to be funny.
The president took several jabs at his age during his remarks in April at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner – starting with the line “I believe in the First Amendment – not just because my good friend Jimmy Madison wrote it.”
“You say I’m old? added the president. “I say I am wise.”
This article originally appeared on NBCNews.com