This week, President Biden was in the news not for his mind, but for his feet. On several recent occasions, he has worn his traditional navy suits with a pair of thick-soled black sneakers by Hoka, the cushiony running shoe company beloved by hypebeasts, fitness freaks and Britney Spears.

The sneakers are the brand’s Transport model, “designed with the city-dweller in mind,” per Hoka’s website, and suitable for working out as well as for daily life. The Transport sells for $150.

Social media hecklers seized on the sneakers as the latest evidence of Biden’s struggles with aging, which has been the focus of media attention since a special counsel report on his handling of classified documents singled out his “advancing age.” One X user dubbed them the “Air Bidens.”

The New York Post and Fox News glommed on, suggesting that Biden is wearing the Hokas for stability to avoid falling or tripping. RNC Research reposted on X an “Inside Edition” segment on the shoes and said “Biden’s handlers are forcing him to wear a new pair of ‘lifestyle sneakers’ because he trips so much.”

In fact, the president has recently been wearing various sneakers, a person close to the president told Politico, after long avoiding them for fear that they did not look as presidential as dress shoes. One of Biden’s best moments of fashion press came when he was pictured in May in an Oval Office meeting with several lawmakers. While Biden had on a pair of leather brogues, others were mocked for wearing the increasingly popular zombie footwear that combines a sneaker sole with a dress shoe top.

But a stiffer gait and pain have convinced him otherwise, according to Politico. His footwear choice may have inspired others: On Tuesday afternoon, more than 12,000 people had viewed the sneaker in the past 24 hours, the Hoka website claimed. (The brand declined a request to comment on whether the spike in views translated to sales.)

The current president is not the only politician making news with shoes.

In February, Donald Trump, now the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, appeared at Sneaker Con to announce a line of Trump sneakers, including a pair of gold “Never Surrender” high-tops with stars, red stripes and a “T” on the tongue and side.

He did not design them — they are produced through one of his many licensing agreements, which have been a source of Trump’s income for decades — but he told the crowd that he had wanted to make sneakers for “12 years, 13 years, and I think it’s going to be a big success.” The Never Surrender, limited to 1,000 pairs by sneakerhead logic, sold out within hours, though other styles remain available for preorder.

At the time, Biden’s team responded by taking a shot below the belt — indeed, below the ankles.

“Donald Trump showing up to hawk bootleg Off-Whites is the closest he’ll get to any Air Force Ones ever again for the rest of his life,” said Biden campaign spokesman Michael Tyler.

In the heat of the Republican race, shoes were again a fetish for candidates and the media alike. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis was the subject of much scrutiny about whether he puts lifts in his shoes to make him taller. And Nikki Haley continually seized upon her own high heels as a way to position her femininity as an authoritative but unthreatening asset.

Why the obsessive focus on shoes?

“Shoes are not just fashion — they reflect much larger social ideas,” Elizabeth Semmelhack, director and senior curator at Toronto’s Bata Shoe Museum, wrote in an email. “It might seem that shoes have a simple job to do — protect our feet — but in fact we task them with much more. Shoes are used in the construction of many social identities from class to gender to age and even to political leanings.”

Semmelhack applauded Biden’s choice of Hokas, whether the logic was to make him feel more secure or to simply look young. “The brand has serious credibility in the athletic footwear world while simultaneously capturing the attention of the fashion world,” she wrote.

The shoes became popular for their puffy design, embraced by runners and daily sneaker wearers for comfort and by fashionably minded menswear and womenswear enthusiasts amid the “dad shoe” craze of a few years ago that followed the preference for slim, minimalist sneakers, such as Nike’s Roshe model.

Even though Trump isn’t wearing his sneakers, they still reveal much about how he’s approaching this election. Semmelhack sees them as a cynical bid for Black voters. Robert Kozinets, a journalism professor at the University of Southern California who is working on a book about fandom, sees them as merch, the latest update to his divisive red MAGA hat, which has become an inextricable part of fan culture in the 21st century.

“For a long time, [the name Trump] stood for success, and it probably still does for a lot of people,” he said. “He has this devoted group of people who were willing to, and in fact eager to, support him. And eager and happy to be identified by some of these ideas through clothes.” If you buy these sneakers or wear the hat, Kozinets said, his followers feel “you’re a part of history.”

Semmelhack points to the conversation around the possibility of lifts in DeSantis’s boots as a test of his masculinity. “For centuries, natural male height has been a measure of manliness. Therefore, any attempt to alter one’s height artificially has long been considered suspect, leading to ridicule and accusations of vanity and/or insecurity.” Cowboy boots are “the only form of high heels that don’t call men’s masculinity into question,” Semmelhack says. “Combining the two can lead to an altered gait and give the ruse away.”

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In other words, the wrong shoes give away that a person is not conforming to whom we expect them to be. These days, the rhetoric of clothing is more muddled than it’s ever been before: A nurse’s uniform on a nurse is just a uniform, but it can also appear on a Prada runway as a couture-like declaration that gives aspiration a new spin. A person in basketball shorts and a T-shirt may have spent $20 or $2,000 on their outfit. Class, power and gender roles have become almost impossible to distill through garments alone.

Yet we maintain our nastiest assumptions about shoes: that heels are for women, sneakers are “urban,” chunky soles are for fogies. How many of us have gazed blithely at someone’s outfit, only to feel a sharp shrivel of judgment when our eyes fall to their footwear? If we no longer feel comfortable judging others by their clothing choices, we cling to our snobbery around shoes. Projecting our fears and beliefs onto shoes, no matter how much we want to believe we’ve moved on from clichés and stereotyping, provides more comfort than any squishy sneaker could.