Generational challenges lie ahead for Joe Biden and Pete Buttigieg

Former US Vice-President Joe Biden, 76, and Indiana mayor Pete Buttigieg, 37, are virtually bookends in the Democratic race. Photos / AP file

Sometimes the confluence of unrelated events provides a moment of clarity in politics.

So it is with the travails of former US Vice-President Joe Biden and the emergence of Pete Buttigieg in the 2020 presidential race. They highlight the challenges that generational politics will play as Democrats select a nominee to run against President Donald Trump.

The two men are virtually bookends in the Democratic race. At 76, Biden is more than twice the age of Buttigieg, who at 37 is just two years past the constitutional requirement to stand for the presidency. Americans have never elected a president as young as Buttigieg, just as the nation has never elected a president as old as Biden.

Biden brings longer experience than anyone else in the field. He has been in the public arena for more than half his life. That experience will be a principal attribute as he tries to make the case to Democrats that he is their party's most electable candidate and that he is capable of settling down the country.

Biden served eight years at the right arm of President Barack Obama, chaired two of the most important committees in the Senate (Judiciary and Foreign Relations), has been in the middle of many of the important domestic policy fights and significant foreign policy issues over the past few decades.

Buttigieg, the Mayor of South Bend, Indiana, graduated from Harvard, was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University, became a military veteran and served in Afghanistan. He also has served as a government executive, albeit it as the leader of a city of 102,000 people. Openly gay and married, he has felt the country's cultural changes in ways other candidates have not.

Both politicians have Rust Belt roots and claim to be in touch with the region of the country that will likely decide who occupies the Oval Office in January 2021. Biden saw the region from its heyday through its decline. And partial rebirth. Buttigieg has been on the front lines, trying to bring back an aging city. Biden has a naturalness among white working-class voters but is a true Washington insider. Buttigieg is a genuine outsider who as a mayor has seen the struggles of those citizens on a daily basis.

Biden is at the top of most polls. Buttigieg trails well behind but is rising. Their experiences of the past few weeks have brought generational challenges for each into sharper focus.

Biden has been on the defensive since Lucy Flores, a former Nevada assemblywoman, described what she said was an uncomfortable encounter with Biden. Several other women have recounted their own such experiences. None called those moments sexual harassment. Other women who have known or worked with Biden came to his defence, saying those physical expressions revealed an empathetic and kind person.

While not exactly a #MeToo moment, what Biden felt was the impact of a cultural shift that has left him somewhat at sea, uncertain of exactly what the new rules are but aware that he will be judged for past actions by standards that are now different. He is on notice.

The broader issue is whether there will be other times during the campaign when his long experience reveals him to be a politician of an earlier era, formed at a time when America was a different country. It will be on him and his team to be mindful that they should not assume that his public service have left him fully equipped for the tests ahead.

No one questions whether Buttigieg is of this time. How does he take advantage of being on the other side of the generational divide from Biden without being disqualified as too inexperienced, too unready?

He has sought to project the image of a person who has thought through issues and has begun to attract attention by the quality of his message and perceptions of his character. He has tried to project a maturity and temperament that contrasts with Trump.

Buttigieg has benefited from low expectations, which he has far exceeded. As he is taken more seriously, those expectations will rise and then he will be tested in more significant ways.. Ultimately, he will have to cross a threshold with voters: Can they envision him in the Oval Office, as commander in chief?

For Buttigieg, the generational issue will be the question of whether he is ready. For Biden, it will be whether he can take the country into its future or is too rooted in the past. Will either provide the reassurance that voters will be looking for?