ATLANTA — There’s plenty of worry among Democrats about whether 81-year-old President Joe Biden is up to the job itself or the task of defeating Donald Trump.
Previous presidential campaigns offer lessons. None convey reasons for optimism.
Going back to Lyndon B. Johnson in 1968, several presidents eligible for reelection faced significant primary challenges or questions about whether they should run again. George H.W. Bush, Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford pushed forward and won their nominations, only to be defeated in November. Johnson opted to withdraw — and Democrats lost anyway.
Biden had no real primary fight. But his allies now acknowledge how poorly the president performed in his debate against Trump. They’ve fretted privately about Biden’s ability to serve until he is 86, and, more immediately, whether he can keep the job by defeating the Republican former president — himself a 78-year-old saddled with a felony conviction, other indictments and voter concerns over his values and temperament.
The warning from history is ominous: Incumbent presidents still working to consolidate and reassure their own party this late in a first term typically do not get a second.
George H.W. Bush and the ‘culture war’ of 1992
An Ivy League-educated Episcopalian, Bush was a moderate Republican and never a favorite of the Christian right or anti-tax, small-government activists.
Bush appealed to the right flank ahead of his victory in…
