Even President Joe Biden’s staff knows he’s too old to campaign and govern with the same efficiency as a younger leader, as they try to deal with his age problem as the 80-year-old runs for a second term. 

Politico’s Jonathan Martin wrote a column Monday about some of the advice Demoratic allies of the president shared with him after the party had a collective freak-out over polls showing former President Donald Trump – the GOP frontrunner – leading Biden in five of six swing states. 

One of Biden’s primary problems, sources said, is that he’s in denial about ‘his capacity to do the job,’ despite his 81st birthday coming next week. 

‘The oldest president in history when he first took the oath, Biden will not be able to govern and campaign in the manner of previous incumbents,’ Martin wrote. ‘He simply does not have the capacity to do it, and his staff doesn’t trust him to even try, as they make clear by blocking him from the press.’ 

The president will occasionally answer questions from the press, but he seldom sits down for interviews, holds few press conferences and has never made an appearance at the podium in the White House briefing room.   

Democrats told Politico President Joe Biden is in denial about ‘his capacity to do the job’ as he runs for reelection as the oldest president in U.S. history 

Aides surround President Joe Biden in the Oval Office. Politico’s Jonathan Martin’s column said ‘his staff doesn’t trust him to even try,’ and wage a traditional campaign, ‘as they make clear by blocking him from the press’ 

Biden, instead, will have to run what’s called a ‘Rose Garden’ campaign – an ‘accommodation to that unavoidable fact of life,’ which is that he’s lost a step. 

That term comes from now former President Jimmy Carter’s run in 1976 when he was challenging the Republican incumbent President Gerald Ford. 

Carter complained that Ford was using White House events to get his campaign’s message out, instead of headlining rallies and more traditional campaign events, which tends to be a grueling practice. 

During the 2020 race, Biden was spared a heavy campaign schedule due to the COVID-19 pandemic and his adherence to social distancing practices. 

This time around, Democrats are urging him to get creative. 

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For one, he needs to deploy a lot of younger Democrats in his stead. 

‘The governors, the senators, the cabinet secretaries and the infrastructure czar should be the faces of Biden’s campaign, along with the president and vice-president,’ the Democrats Politico talked to said. ‘The message: with Democrats remaining in power, it’s not just an 82-year-old at the helm but also this group – Team Normal when compared to Trump and his Star Wars bar term two.’

First lady Jill Biden (left) and President Joe Biden (right) touch hands on the South Lawn. A number of Democrats shared their advice with Politico on how he can deal with the age issue, as he turns 81 next week 

Biden’s team and the Democratic National Committee started doing this by sending surrogates to the GOP debates. 

At the first debate in Milwaukee, congressman turned White House official turned DNC adviser Cedric Richmond was there to provide counterprogramming. 

At the Reagan library in Simi Valley, California’s 56-year-old Gov. Gavin Newsom played spokesman for the Biden campaign, even appearing on Fox News opposite of Sean Hannity. 

And in Miami last week, Illinois Gov. J. B. Pritzker, who’s 58, spoke for the party. 

The allies Politico spoke to pointed to the debate representation but said ‘that’s not nearly enough.’ 

And while Trump is known to go on-and-on and hold back-to-back rallies – he headlined 14 rallies in the final three days of his 2020 campaign – instead of matching that, Democrats urged Biden to get creative about the venues he meets with voters.

They advised Biden’s staff to put the president in ‘settings that play to his strengths’ adding that while that may be ‘risky’ it will ‘capture his decency rather than his infirmities.’ 

‘A casino stroll and sit-down conversation with the (heavily Hispanic) culinary union in Las Vegas; a town hall with Arab-Americans in Dearborn, Mich.; an HBCU football tailgate (think Georgia),’ they suggested.