Protecting Old Yeller – Shift made to shorter staircase to board Air Force One

A shift in the president’s routine has subtlety happened. When Joe Biden walks up the stairs to Air Force One, it is the ‘lower stairs’, not the full scale stairs we are accustomed to seeing presidents use to board the plane.

White House aides are saying it is an intentional shift to use the lower stairs. The aides say it is to make the president’s travel “easier.” That’s code for safer. Joe Biden is 80-years-old and he’s in a downward decline, both physically and mentally. He has taken a spill several times on the stairs leading up to Air Force One and took a half-spill recently. He was able to recover quickly enough that the cameras trained on him barely caught what could have been another full-blown tumble. The man is frail. No one wants to see him break a hip. Even a fractured tibia would be dangerous at his age.

Less stairs to climb, less risk of falls. The president is also wearing sneakers more often instead of dress shoes. That is something you would do to help lessen the risk of a fall, too. When he got off Air Force One when he returned from Europe, he was unusually casually dressed. He wore a polo shirt, khakis, and sneakers. Casual clothes will allow sneakers to be worn without calling attention to them. It will be interesting to see if he makes that change more often.

He was already wearing some kind of rubber stabilizer thingy on the bottom of his dress shoe heels. Sneakers are an escalation in caution.

“The sneakers are another concession to comfort necessitated by age,” Politico reported. “One person close to the president said Biden used to always resist wearing anything other than dress shoes, believing that any other footwear look was unpresidential. But he has eased up on that stance in recent months.”

Bloomberg’s Justin Sink asked White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre about the reported change and whether the president was having “mobility problems.”

“I don’t have any decision process to walk through,” Jean-Pierre responded. “I’m sure there’s a protocol that’s used for the — for Air Force One. I just don’t have one.”

The outlet reported that the president’s aides were doing everything they can to “limit situations where any signs of physical frailty might be on heightened display.”

It’s a little late to be worrying about “heightened display” at this point, isn’t it? The world has already witnessed his falls, stumbles, and when he smacks his head on the doorway of Marine One. The time to worry about fragility was in 2019 when those around him should have advised him not to run for president. He was already old and frail. He already manifested a stiff gait. There was no fooling people that he was youngish and spry. Voters wanted to vote against Trump, they weren’t voting for Biden. He was the lesser of two evils for those voters. Now it is impossible to ignore how his age affects his daily life.

Some people age slowly and gracefully. Others don’t. Joe is an old 80-year-old. Trump is a youngish 77-year-old man. That’s just the reality.

We’ve already noticed that Biden skips formal dinners when he’s overseas. He needs to rest. The staff make excuses, like he has to finish a speech for the next day, but the reason is clear. Biden is failing. Does anyone believe he writes his own speeches? He doesn’t even write out his own note cards.

“There are a series of factors that go into the logistical decision-making on this, including weather, what kind of airport we’re landing at and whether there is a formal greeting planned for the tarmac where we expect that press will want an official photo at the bottom of the tall stairs,” an unnamed White House official told the outlet. “There’s not one hard and fast rule — it is a decision made on a variety of factors in a wide range of settings and circumstances.”

Biden was spotted using the lower steps in good weather conditions during his trips to London, Vilnius, Helsinki, Washington, D.C., North Carolina, Chicago, San Fransisco and Philadelphia, according to the outlet.

Yeah. It ain’t the weather. It’s him.

.@POTUS walks off Air Force One as he arrives back at Joint Base Andrews, Md. pic.twitter.com/b4LFjZ9csw

— Doug Mills (@dougmillsnyt) July 14, 2023