Smaller events, fewer ties — Biden is heeding advice to loosen up
As 2024 approached, Biden aides suggested a shift in his public style to help ease voters’ concerns about his age.
WASHINGTON — Through decades of political life before he entered the White House, Joe Biden rarely shied from leaning into his public persona as an affable everyman more comfortable in a Dairy Queen than the Situation Room. Now a buttoned-up president who often appears behind a lectern in a suit and tie, Biden is heeding pleas from top advisers to return to his original form, according to multiple people familiar with the conversations.
Biden, these people said, is taking advice from confidants who’ve suggested he try a more casual approach in public to try to ease one of voters’ chief concerns about his 2024 candidacy: his age.
That means more informal remarks, unannounced stops at diners and appearances in social media posts and on podcasts, as well as fewer ties and Rose Garden ceremonies. The series of subtle shifts, which aides say they’ve proposed to him in multiple conversations over the past few months, are meant to signal that Biden is more youthful than his 81 years might suggest.
One of the changes will be on display Friday when Biden travels to Pennsylvania. He plans to ditch his usual format of delivering a prepared speech to an assembled audience and to instead make a series of stops at smaller venues, according to the White House. The format, aides say, allows Biden to engage more organically, and directly, with voters.
Biden embraced the approach this week, too. After he delivered a speech at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, he changed out of his suit and tie for an unscheduled stop at Hannibal’s Kitchen nearby. He entered the restaurant holding a baseball cap, then spent about an hour talking to patrons, posing for selfies and recording a local radio interview.
Rating: 5