Translated from Swedish: Old-but vital
With Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren already in the 2020 presidential race and Joe Biden about to throw his hat in the ring, it seemed a good time to raise the question about whether someone could be too old to be considered for President.
Bernie Sanders is 77. Joe Biden is 76. Elizabeth Warren is 69. And the current White House occupant is 72.
A 16-year-old Bernie supporter recently was quoted saying that it was ageist to say he is too old to be President. It’s real progress that a 16-year-old knows the term “ageist.” We have always believed that age should not be a barrier, that older persons in good health should be able to do whatever they wanted. And there may be roles where they excel. Supreme Court Justice, for example.
But does age bring some limits? The most obvious barrier is that being President is a strenuous job. There are long days, continual demands, people to meet, places to go. The physical demands wear out younger people. We are both in good health and exercise daily, but we know we do not have the endurance that we had in the past for long hours of work.
History is not a good guide when it comes to the age of presidents. During the 19thcentury, the two of the oldest Presidents when they took office were William Henry Harrison at 68 and Zachary Taylor at 65. Old Tippecanoe, as Harrison was called, caught pneumonia riding to his inauguration and died a few weeks later. President Taylor died of a bacterial infection two years after assuming office, leaving the country deeply divided and on a path toward Civil War.
Of course, health care is much better now and a 75 year old person today is much more likely to live another 10-15 years.
The counter argument is that age might confer advantages of wisdom and good decision-making (although there's precious little of it in evidence from the current White House). We found a ranking of American presidents from best (Lincoln) to worst (Trump) that was compiled by a panel of 200 members of the American Political Science Association’s Presidents and Executive Politics Section. We correlated their rankings with age of presidents when taking office. The correlation was a non-significant .21 between higher age and worse ranking. And the correlation is slightly inflated. It hardly seems fair to rank William Henry Harrison near the bottom (42ndout of 44) when he really never served as president. But there is little to guide us about people over 70. Only two presidents have been elected who were over 70 in their first terms, Reagan (ranked 9th) and Trump.
One concern is that an older president might develop dementia. Incidence of dementia rises steadily through the 70s into the 80s. Although it remains somewhat controversial, there does seem to be evidence that President Reagan experienced early changes associated with dementia in his last years of office. Whether he was impaired or not in his last years in office, President Reagan relied on his staff and cabinet to set the overall course of the administration, and so any problems he might have been having were not reflected in how the government ran. Another president suffering cognitive problems could ignore advice and implement policies that were destructive.
Two other presidents experienced significant impairments in office. President Woodrow Wilson suffered a severe stroke in 1919. He was 62. His wife kept him hidden from the press and public, and made all the key decisions for him the rest of his term, which ended in April, 1921. Franklin D. Roosevelt, by most measures one of our greatest presidents, experienced declining health in his third term, and there were periods of time when he stayed out of the public eye because of his poor health. Yet he ran for and won a fourth term, only to die soon after his inauguration at age 63.
Given modern media coverage, it is unlikely that illness or incapacity of a president could be hidden. But early changes associated with dementia can be subtle and readily denied, especially by the person experiencing those symptoms. It is also not at all certain that the President’s cabinet or Congress would put national interests ahead of politics to invoke the 25thAmendment, should a president seem incapacitated.
What about a Beto-aged (46) president? Besides bringing energy to the job, a younger person may be more likely to have fresh perspectives and to understand the impact of new trends and technologies. The record on young presidents is mixed. Jefferson (age 44) and Teddy Roosevelt (age 43) were ranked 5thand 4th, respectively in the survey. Barak Obama was ranked 8th in the survey. Other young presidents had more uneven records, such as Clinton and Kennedy, though Kennedy’s presidency was cut short. One “young” president, Franklin Pierce, was a clear disaster.
So in the end there is no clear answer. We want someone with great ideas and also the skill and experience to get an agenda through Congress that addresses the country’s most pressing issues. If that turns out to be Bernie, Joe, or Elizabeth, we will support them. But stamina and health could become concerns.
The link will take you to a summary of rankings of Presidents mentioned above.
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