With help from Allie Bice and Daniel Payne Welcome to POLITICO’s West Wing Playbook, your guide to the people and power centers in the Biden administration. Did someone forward this to you? Subscribe here! Have a tip? Email us at westwingtips@politico.com. As world leaders gladhand and pose for countless photos at the optics-heavy G-7 summit this weekend in Cornwall, England, one visible detail jumps out: President JOE BIDEN is the eldest of all the statesmen. In fact, of all the leaders Biden is set to meet with in the U.K., only the 95-year-old Queen of England will be his senior. The White House, nevertheless, seems to be trying to project an image of Biden, 78, as a vigorous peer who can hang with the likes of Canadian Prime Minister JUSTIN TRUDEAU, 49, and French President EMMANUEL MACRON, 43, rather than that of a wise graybeard. He sported running shoes while grabbing a Coca-Cola at the hotel bar in Cornwall. Standing alongside his fellow world leaders near the Atlantic Ocean, he joked, “[e]verybody in the water.” Biden is more active than most septuagenarians. But there’s also been a meticulous White House effort to make him seem, well, younger. There are the bike rides past photographers and the jogging up the steps of Air Force One (he’s become more careful since he fell doing so). The White House has blocked news photographers from taking overhead shots, which some photographers believe is because of Biden’s thinning hair. During the campaign, it was a rule among staff to not post photos of Biden from behind because of his bald spot. The White House declined to comment. Biden is far from the first president to try to deflect questions about his age, vigor, or appearance with careful choreography. Biden’s predecessor, DONALD TRUMP, wore long ties because he believed they had a slimming effect, political ally and former New Jersey Gov. CHRIS CHRISTIE wrote in a 2019 tell-all. And let’s not forget the famous comb-over and year-round orange-hued skin tone. GEORGE H.W. BUSH , in his late 60’s while president, treated the public “to constant pictures of himself running, golfing, playing tennis,” as the Chicago Tribune put it in 1992. SUSAN BIDDLE, who worked as White House photographer during RONALD REAGAN and the elder Bush’s administration and later became a staff photographer for The Washington Post, said Bush’s kinetic image was genuine. “He used to wear out the press because he was so active,” she said. “He just had more energy than you could imagine.” Neither administration ever asked her to photograph the president in a certain way, she added. Reagan, who was the oldest sitting president when he left office in 1989 at 77, took frequent vacations to his California ranch and was often photographed there on horseback. When the Soviet leader MIKHAIL GORBACHEV met Reagan in Geneva, Switzerland, in 1985, Gorbachev wore an overcoat and a scarf — but Reagan wore only a suit jacket. The image stuck. “As some of the Russian people said...Gorbachev came across as the spiritually older person,” JACK MATLOCK, the U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union at the time, recalled in a 2015 interview . “Reagan seemed bolder, and Gorbachev more cautious.” The image of Biden on his bike in Delaware last week, one former Reagan administration official told West Wing Playbook, “was like horseback riding with Reagan.” Biden has devoted special attention to his appearance throughout his political career and was sensitive to anything lacking “machismo,” as some former campaign aides put it. Never more so has that manifested itself than with his hair. In his book “Audacity to Win,” President BARACK OBAMA’s 2008 campaign manager DAVID PLOUFFE deemed Biden “follically challenged” — and he suggested that Biden was well aware of it. After Biden debated SARAH PALIN in 2008, Plouffe recalled the vice presidential nominee grabbing political consultant FRANK GREER — who had a nice head of hair — to thank him. “Man, Frank,” Plouffe recounted Biden saying, “if I only had your hair I could have been the number one guy on this ticket!” Do you work in the Biden administration? Are you in touch with the White House? Are you CAMERON WEBB? We want to hear from you — and we’ll keep you anonymous: westwingtips@politico.com. Or if you want to stay really anonymous send us a tip through SecureDrop, Signal, Telegram, or Whatsapp here. You can also reach Alex and Theo individually. | 
