Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates is calling out Joe Biden’s national security and foreign policy credibilility — and says age would be “problematic” for both Biden and rival Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt.
In an interview aired Sunday on CBS News’ “Face The Nation,” Gates, 75, said he hadn’t changed his mind about a position he took in his memoir when it comes to the former vice president’s policy stances.
“I think I stand by that statement,” he said of remarks in the 2015 book in which he wrote of Biden: “I think he's been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.”
“He and I agreed on some key issues in the Obama administration,” Gates said. “We disagreed significantly on Afghanistan and some other issues. … as I say elsewhere in the memoir, I think the vice president had some issues with the military. So how he would get along with the senior military, and what that relationship would be, I think it would depend on the personalities at the time.”
But Gates said, however, at least he’s got experience in the matter, and “I've hardly heard a word out of any of the other 20 candidates on foreign policy at all.”
Then there’s the age question, Gates said. Biden is 76; Sanders is 77.
“I think I'm pretty busy and pretty active but I think having a president who is somebody our age or older, in the case of Senator Sanders, I think it's problematic.
“I think that you don't have the kind of energy that I think is required to be president. I'm not sure you have the intellectual acuity that you might have had in your sixties. So, I mean, it's just a personal view…. the thought of taking on those responsibilities at this point in my life would be pretty daunting.”
Gates said the age issue is “a question people ought address,”
“Although the other side of the coin is, by the time of his second term, Ronald Reagan was up there also, and I think Ronald Reagan was a pretty great president,” he said. “So I mean there are exceptions.”
“When you're talking about being the president of the United States, the ability to do the job in every respect has always got to be a consideration,” he added.
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