Joe Biden’s age will not prevent him from being re-elected for a second term, is sure the director of the Institute for the United States and Canada (ISC) of the Russian Academy of Sciences Valery Garbuzov. About this he said Russian media in the show “What was it?!”
On April 25, Biden officially announced that he would run as a candidate in the 2024 presidential election. Donald Trump also announced his intention to run in the election.
As Garbuzov recalled, there is now a long period of primaries in the United States – that is, primaries, in which three Democratic candidates have announced their participation at the moment, including Biden himself and Robert Kennedy, John F. Kennedy’s nephew, as well as five – Republicans. However, the number of participants in the primaries, estimates the expert, could exceed 20 people.
“Age speculation is usually done when the president is not young: the press lights up, the opponents, i.e. Republicans, all certain awkwardness and shortcomings are portrayed either as the madness of “an old man, already be like an inability to rule the state. But nothing. Obviously, he (Biden) will still get the first term and go to the polls for a second term. And he, by the way , 80. For some reason, I suspect so much that if he is elected, I don’t rule that out, then he will serve a second term as President of the United States of America,” Garbuzov said.
He added that “the current president has a trump card – it’s four years in power.” According to him, it is estimated that the incumbent president can only fail in the elections in two cases: if he has been completely unlucky in this position, or if an economic crisis falls on his power. None of these conditions, Garbuzov believes, can apply to Biden: there is even a minimal economic recovery in the United States, unemployment problems are being resolved, so “there is no no difficulty for the outgoing president to repeat his success.”
“And many think Biden will, despite being old. We must understand a very important thing: the personality of the president can be different, it can have many weak points. Age and health probably take the first places in terms of ranking. I’m not talking about scandals, personal behavior. But no matter what happens to him, there is not just a president, but the institution of presidential power – that’s a pretty powerful construct in the real political life of the United States of America. And if something happens to the president, then this construct begins to act instantly. But the party will not let go of even the sickest president, ”notes the political scientist.
Thus, part of the presidential functions can be assumed by his assistants, deputies, vice-president, who can exercise them for a long time, “in order to hold out until the end of the presidential mandate”. As an example, Garbuzov cited the situation of the 40th President of the United States, Ronald Reagan, who, also being an elderly man, “has fallen asleep during meetings of the Security Council for the past two years”.
“He had two sound machines. He is known to have later contracted Alzheimer’s disease, which he openly admitted, but now openly admitted by those who said that the first signs of this disease appeared during the second presidential term. It is, of course, very sad that such situations occur. But the reality is that even with such things, the party stands up for its leader and won’t give up on him for anything. Therefore, as far as Biden is concerned, even though he is the President of the United States, he does not solve problems alone. In the United States of America, I emphasize, there is a system of collective management. There is a collective responsibility here. Nobody wants to take responsibility alone, although the president has it. But when certain key issues are resolved, of course, the president is interested in the collective responsibility of his administration,” Garbuzov said.
“America’s interest is America itself”
Speaking about Trump’s chances of returning to the White House, the expert noted that according to the latest polls, a fairly large number of Republicans support him – 34%. According to Garbuzov, Trump is a prominent representative of radical conservatism, which – despite all the liberality of the United States – “wakes up when America is bad.” After Republican Reagan, who was in power throughout the 1980s, this “conservatism went to the sand” and woke up precisely with Trump, added the director of the ISK RAS.
“By that logic, this wave should now go into the sand, and Trump should not come to power. Or maybe this law won’t work after a while, and Trump can always raise his head, once again infuse strength into the conservative movement, lead them once again to storm the White House and take power. “, argues the expert.
According to him, the American elections are interesting because a year and a half before them, anything can happen for various reasons related to both the investigations against Trump and the possible investigations against Biden. The Ukrainian question, according to Garbuzov, in this case will not play any key role.
“America’s primary interest at all times is America itself, of course. Certainly. I don’t think Ukraine’s problem will be the main one in the next elections. And the problem of foreign policy becomes the main one when it is closely linked to domestic policy. When Trump was accused of being associated with Putin, then this problem became the main one for voters and for very many. I don’t think Ukraine will become such a problem in the next elections,” he added.
As Garbuzov noted, after all, there are unresolved national economic and social issues in the United States, including migration, poverty and others, which will become the focus of the upcoming election campaign.
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