The fuse on President Joe Biden’s age and whether he can command a second term has been alight for months. Seventy-six per cent of American voters are concerned about whether Biden is fit mentally or physically for a second term. Eighty-one per cent of independents and over half of Democrats share these concerns.

Biden’s approval rating is at 41 per cent – the lowest for a president in decades and lower at this point of the election year than Jimmy Carter in 1980, who was trounced by Ronald Reagan; George HW Bush, ousted by Bill Clinton in 1992; and Donald Trump, who Biden defeated in 2020. Biden cannot win the election from such a low rating.

Could Joe Biden be hounded out of the presidential race? Yes, but he still has options to salvage his position. Credit: AP

Special counsel Robert Hur’s report on Biden’s handling classified documents was a legal vindication for the president. Biden will not be charged. “The bottom line is: The matter is now closed,” Biden said.

But the special counsel did not stop at a simple decision on whether Biden should be indicted. “We have also considered that, at trial, Mr Biden would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview of him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”

There was much more: “Mr Biden’s memory was worse. He did not remember when he was vice president, forgetting on the first day of the interview when his term ended (‘if it was 2013 – when did I stop being vice president?’), and forgetting on the second day of the interview when his term began (‘in 2009, am I still vice president?’).”

The fuse still burns despite the view of many Democrats that Hur, a Republican, exceeded prosecutorial norms by editorialising on his judgment of Biden’s cognitive abilities. One former Justice Department official said, “I think it’s outrageous. Prosecutors are taught that the Department of Justice should speak through charges or it shouldn’t speak at all.”

Despite all the immense age, mental and stability issues presented by Trump and his uncontrolled extremism, Biden’s age is a live issue. It will not go away. We will not know until election day whether he can overcome it.

For now, there is intense speculation about whether Biden should stand aside. There is no shortage of advice. The Wall Street Journal, which is no friend to Trump: “The president and his family, who seemed determined to risk the country on the increasingly dicey bet that he was the best candidate to save us from Trump 2.0, now have a powerful reason to rethink that assumption. Calls for four more years will inevitably make Americans wonder whether our 81-year-old president even has that many left. If ever there was a moment when someone in the White House must summon the grace to let the torch be passed to a new generation, this is it.”