Is Biden Too Old or Have Other Presidents Been Too Young?

There is a column in today’s New York Times by Jennifer Senior that makes the case that President-elect Biden’s age could really be an advantage.  She points out the positive things that can happen as we age.  Like experience and expertise.  Many people have pointed out that Joe Biden knows how Washington works and can draw on that experience to get things done.  Of course, some critics have suggested that his knowledge of Washington is obsolete, that the Republican Party and its soulless leader in the Senate will not cooperate or compromise to pass important legislation.  But is there a better idea than trying to reach across the aisle to make things happen, or a better person than Mr. Biden to try to make that work?  

 

Senior notes another quality that Biden brings to the Presidency--wisdom.  We often say that older people are wise, but then we don't treat them as wise.  Of course, not all older people are wise, and age alone does not lead to wisdom.

 

What actually constitutes wisdom was a long-standing issue in Gerontology, but a program of research conducted by Paul Baltes and his colleagues has provided a compelling framework for understanding wisdom.  One aspect of wisdom is drawn from experience—factual and procedural knowledge.  That is, a wise person has access to a lot of facts in a domain as well as knowledge about how things work and how problems get solved in that domain.  One implication is that wisdom is not a general characteristic.  Rather, people can act wisely in domains where they have expertise, but may not give “wise” counsel in other domains.

 

Expertise, however, is not enough.  Another aspect of wisdom is what Baltes and colleagues called “excellence in mind and virtue.”  Here, they mean that the wise person strives toward excellence and the common good.  The wise person is not focused on themselves.  They are not saying, “I did it this way, and so that’s what you should do.”  They are instead applying knowledge about a specific situation that takes into account both the situation and the people involved.  Another way to say this is the wise person has empathy, which is another finding in the research conducted by Baltes and colleagues.  

You can see in this definition of wisdom a major difference between the 74 year old outgoing President and the 78 year old President-elect. Or as Senior wrote, the voters “decided to replace a savage clown and chaos-sowing novice with a man defined by decency and nearly half a century of public service.”

 

Aging, of course, has its perils.  The older we get, the more likely something bad will happen.  But Biden’s knowledge and temperament and his concern about other people, all of which have been honed over the course of his life, indicate he is up to the tasks ahead.  

 

 

Link to “Stop Worrying About Biden’s Age” by Jennifer Senior

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/12/opinion/biden-age-president.html?referringSource=articleShare

 

To read more about wisdom:  Baltes, P. B., & Smith, J. (2008).  The fascination of wisdom:  Its nature, ontogeny and function,  Perspectives on Psychological Science. 3, 56-64.  doi: 10.1111/j.1745-6916.2008.00062.x

Photo:  Elephant on a stairway in Lisbon.