By MARSHA MERCER
Vice President Joe Biden quickened the pulse of some
Democrats last month when he said he may run for president. In four years, he’ll
be 78. Was he serious?
Die-hard Bernie Sanders fans want to believe he still
has a shot at the White House. In 2020, Sanders will be 79.
In comparison, Elizabeth Warren, another Democratic
presidential possibility, is a youngster. She’ll be a mere 71 in four years.
Donald J. Trump enters the Oval Office at threescore
years and 10, the age Mark Twain at his own 70th birthday party
called the “Scriptural statute of limitations.”
Months older than Ronald Reagan at his first
inauguration, Trump will be the oldest first-term president in history.
Most Americans don’t remember that even younger
presidents have had serious health problems. Woodrow Wilson was 63 when he
suffered a debilitating stroke in 1919 and was gravely ill for the last year
and a half of his term.
Dwight Eisenhower was 65 when he had a massive heart
attack in Denver in 1955 and spent seven weeks in the hospital there. The White
House kept the public in the dark about the severity of both cases. Eisenhower
recovered and won a second term.
Age was hardly mentioned during the last campaign,
which offered voters a choice between grandparents. Grandpa Trump is a year
older than Grandma Hillary Clinton, but he gibed that she lacked the stamina to
be president.
Clinton and Trump released letters from their doctors
attesting to their health, with Clinton providing more details. Neither went as
far as GOP presidential nominee John McCain in 2008. To reassure voters about
his physical fitness, McCain, then 71, released more than a thousand pages of
medical records.
While Trump’s vice president, Mike Pence, is 57, most
of Trump’s Cabinet picks are white males over 60, reflecting the growing trend
of working later in life. Nearly 20 percent of Americans over 65 hold full or
part-time jobs, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported last year.
The Oval Office, though, has traditionally been a
place for the middle-aged. The average age of presidents at their first
inauguration is 55. John F. Kennedy was inaugurated at 43, Bill Clinton at 46
and Barack Obama, 47. Theodore Roosevelt became the youngest president at 42,
after the assassination of William McKinley.
When World War II hero Bob Dole ran for president in 1996,
he had to put up with late-night jokes about his age – 72.
“Bob Dole is calling himself an optimist,” David Letterman
said in a monologue. “I understand this because a lot of people would look at a
glass as half empty. Bob Dole looks at the glass and says, `What a great place
to put my teeth.’” Dole lost to the decades-younger Clinton.
Perhaps the all-time master at obliterating the age
issue was Ronald Reagan. In 1984, Reagan, 73, was running for a second term against
Democrat Walter Mondale, a lad of 56. Asked during a presidential debate if he
was up for another four years, the Gipper was ready.
“I’m not going to exploit for political purposes my
opponent’s youth and inexperience,” Reagan quipped, putting away the age issue,
at least through the election.
Reagan, who survived being shot and colon cancer as
president, even dared to tell self-deprecating age jokes.
“One of my favorite quotations about age comes from
Thomas Jefferson. He said that we should never judge a president by his age,
only by his work. And ever since he told me that, I’ve stopped worrying,”
Reagan told the National Alliance for Senior Citizens in 1984.
“When I go in for a
physical now, they no longer ask me how old I am. They just carbon-date me,” he
said at the White House Correspondents Dinner in 1987.
It was easy for Reagan to joke about getting older
when he was often seen riding horses and clearing brush at his California
ranch. He wasn’t diagnosed with Alzheimer’s until several years after he left
office.
So far, Trump – who boasts about his vigor and has a glamorous,
46-year-old wife -- has managed to avoid age jokes. We’ll see whether his age becomes
a punch line in four years when he’s 74.
©2017 Marsha Mercer.
All rights reserved.
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