Age and the Presidency - Perspectives, Older, Younger
by Marion Edwyn Harrison (3/11/08)
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL two weeks ago, in the context of discussing the age of Senator John Sidney McCain, III, who will turn 72 in August, noted the ages of highly significant - and generally acclaimed as truly great - leaders beginning with World War II. WALL STREET JOURNAL columnist Bryan Cole or an editor cleverly characterizes the McCain age as “By historical standards [that of] a mere broth of a lad.”
Prime Minister Winston [Leonard] S[pencer] Churchill took office the first time at age 65, the second at 76, serving until he was 80. Chancellor Konrad [Hermann Josef] Adenauer served from age 77 to 87, President Charles [André Joseph Marie] de Gaulle from 68 to 78, President Nelson [Rolihlahla] Mandela from 75 to 80, Prime Minister Golda [Mabovitch] Meir from 70 to 76, President Ronald Wilson Reagan from 69 to 77.
The Cole piece does not discuss the ages at inauguration of our American Presidents who served during the same period. Former Governor Franklin Delano Roosevelt was third youngest - almost 51. Vice President and former Senator Harry S. (no middle name - only an initial) Truman was 60. General of the Army Dwight David Eisenhower (who wished he had a shorter name when he signed papers), World War II Supreme Allied Commander, Army Chief of Staff, President of Columbia University, was 62. Senator John Fitzgerald Kennedy was the youngest, a mere 44. Vice President and former Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Baines Johnson was 64. Former Senator and Vice President Richard Milhous Nixon was 56. Vice President Gerald Rudolph Ford, Jr. (born Leslie Lynch King, Jr.) was 61. Former Vice President, Ambassador and Central Intelligence Agency Director George Herbert Walker Bush was 65. Governor George Walker Bush was 54. Governor James Earl (Jimmy) Carter, Jr. was 52. Only Governor William Jefferson (Bill) Clinton, at 46, and Senator Kennedy, at 44, were as young as Senator Barack Hussein Obama, Jr. (as Obama’s name is listed in WHO’S WHO IN AMERICA, 2008).
The Cole column, while masterfully written, discusses neither Obama’s youth in relation to McCain’s age or otherwise. It also does not discuss the unprecedented longevity of 21st Century Americans. The German life expectancy in 1886 when the Iron Chancellor, Otto Edouard von Bismarck, first introduced what we now call Social Security was about 65. It also was about 65 when FDR first sponsored our American Social Security in 1935. Nowadays it’s in the 81+ range, depending upon whose statistics one cites.
How, if at all, voters will choose to factor in age to candidacy remains to be seen. Barring the unlikely it now appears one November 8 Presidential candidate will have turned 72 in the August before the election. The other, presently apparently leading to, if not assured of, his party’s nomination, will have turned 47, also in August.
What of the words of Thomas Wentworth Higginson (1823-1911), from his Sixty and Six: A Fountain of Youth:
“Age, I make light of it,
Fear not the sight of it,
Time’s but our playmate,
Whose toys are divine.”
Maybe voters will evaluate ability, substantive issues and relevant experience.
Marion Edwyn Harrison is President of, and Counsel to, the Free Congress Foundation: http://www.freecongress.org/
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