Daily Archive

Agence France-Presse:

If elected to the White House John McCain would be the oldest man to become president at age 72, but his top adviser said on Thursday the Republican candidate’s age posed no problem.

The oldest man at 72? But aren’t all men, when 72, the same age? (Just kidding: couldn’t resist AFP’s awkward phrasing there.)

“I don’t think it’s much of an issue,” Charles Black, senior adviser to the Republican senator, told MSNBC.

“If you talk to the reporters who cover McCain, who go out with him on 14- and 15-hour days, sometimes seven-day weeks, they see the energy level that tells them that age is not an issue,” Black said.

He spoke a day after Democratic lawmaker John Murtha, 75, a Vietnam war veteran and supporter of Senator Hillary Clinton’s White House candidacy, said McCain was too old to be president.

“This one guy running is about as old as me. Let me tell you something, it’s no old man’s job,” Murtha said…

Although outwardly certain they will sweep all before them in November, Democrats somehow also seem a bit on edge over their actually having to fight an election in which they face a seasoned Republican opponent. (Apparently, the Democratic nominee is supposed to be acclaimed caesar president by the adoring Democratic- only crowd in the Forum.) For one may also recall that a couple of months back it was Sen McCain’s Panama Canal Zone military birth that many hoped would miraculously somehow disqualify him. This month, it’s his age.

The level of angst is demonstrated by Rep Murtha (and others) willing to go to the lengths of unconstitutionally arguing (evidently only half-jokingly) that Sen McCain is chronologically “too old” to be president. Yet about any Democrats perhaps being too young they have nothing to say? After all, while there is constitutionally no presidental age ceiling, the Constitution actually DOES bar the presidency to those under 35 years of age.

And if you think about that, if anything that younger age is even scarier today. For given how Western societies are increasingly delaying the onset of adulthood, “age 35″ in 2008 is all too often a rather different maturity level of “35″ than was the case in 1789.

However, on the upper end, in 1789 age 65 was generally considered elderly. George Washington, 57 upon taking office, was considered aging. Yet much longer life expectancy has by now rendered that same 65 often just this side of “mid-life”. Indeed, and for some, it’s still not quite full adulthood.

Given such, when in one’s forties nowadays one probably shouldn’t even feel in possession of nearly enough life experience to be president. But at least in supporting Sen Clinton, Rep Murtha thinks there’s nothing wrong with a woman being president. And — especially given his being a Democrat — presumably there is also nothing problematic about being in a wheelchair.

Which is how it should be. But given that increasingly delayed maturity, it is also actually possible that neither Sen Clinton or even a 72 year old Sen McCain are as of yet even wholly experienced enough for the presidential role of today. That’s to say nothing of the third major aspirant. In his forties, he (of no middle name which may be uttered publicly) has to date impressively set himself apart from those opponents by having been, over his “long” career thus far, a “community organizer”, state legislator (for 15 minutes), U.S. senator (also for 15 minutes so far) and a church-goer.

But we always have to vote for a politician, and not a messiah perfection, of course. Still, it is worth asking ourselves if we have suffered entirely too long from the “youthful leader syndrome”? For most of us probably believe the presidency should be a capstone, the last role from which a politician then heads into retirement, and NOT some mid-career job.

George Washington, remember, died within three years of leaving office. He hadn’t yet reached 68. Thus he was unable to spend subsequent decades pursuing his own post-presidential personal foreign policy, while blundering around the globe.