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Grey matters: Age as a factor in the election

Saul Friedman | Gray Matters

June 21, 2008

In this most unusual presidential campaign, like it or not, voters have had to deal with the issues of race and gender.

Now comes the issue of age. Sen. John McCain, if elected at age 72, would become the oldest person (and the first known cancer survivor) to assume the presidency.

McCain, who will be 72 Aug.29, jokes, "I am older than dirt and have more scars than Frankenstein," but he boasts of his stamina and the longevity that runs in his family (his mother is in her 90s). And advocates for older people vigorously deny that McCain is too old to be president and suggest the issue smacks of "ageism."

Indeed, the man who coined that term, Dr. Robert Butler, a gerontologist and founder of the International Longevity Center based in New York City, insisted to me that McCain is not too old to run. He noted that Sen. Robert Dole was older, at 73, when he ran in 1996 against then-President Bill Clinton, "and the worry was he wouldn't outlive his term if he were elected. He's now eight years beyond two terms. ... After World War II, Conrad Adenauer, in his 80s, led Germany, and Charles de Gaulle led France. ... older people can play a very stabilizing and important influence in politics." [CORRECTION: The first name of Konrad Adenauer, the post-World War II chancellor of Germany, was misspelled in Act Two on Saturday. (A13 ALL 06/23/08)]

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In fact, current polls by Pew Research seem to reflect this view. Older people are consistently more faithful voters (65 percent) than any other age group, and they seem to value experience over style. Thus, they tended to support Sen. Hillary Clinton over Sen. Barack Obama by large margins. And in general election matchups, they preferred Clinton against McCain, and McCain over Obama, citing experience. They could make the difference for McCain in November.

Still, Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.), who is 75 and, like McCain, is a Vietnam veteran, says the presidency is "no old man's job." And Web magazine TruthDig columnist Robert Scheer, who is a few months older than McCain, asked if "our septuagenarian president would be fully focused" in a crisis. Scheer, who should know better, said, "Those brain cells do go and 'senior moments' of befuddlement are more than a joke." Aging, he added, "does have a deleterious effect on one's physical and mental functioning."

Scheer ought to know that brain cells (neurons) continue to grow as long as you are alive and active. Scheer's columns, after all, have not lost their bite. And it's illness and disease, not aging, that has a deleterious effect. The pace of the aging process is different in all of us. As I've said before, we are not as old as our parents were at our age.

Nevertheless, in a society that panders to youth, the negative perceptions of age and ageism among most voters will almost certainly make an issue of McCain's age. Bernie Horn, blogging for the liberal Campaign for America's Future, cited a CBS/New York Times poll that found that 48 percent of Americans believed the best age for a president was somewhere in their 50s. Only 2 percent said the 70s. Twenty percent said the 40s, and 18 percent said the 60s.

These poll results, and some recent history, point to some reasons that a candidate's age, after 70, may be a legitimate issue. At that age, for example, is a person so set in his ways that he cannot show the flexibility and pragmatism when necessary? Horn said, "We want McCain's age to remind voters that he is hopelessly out of touch with Americans' needs, desires and concerns."

He and other McCain critics point to his conservative votes during 36 years in Congress, including opposing most health care bills (although he's had government health care for most of his life) and the holiday to honor the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. They cite his stubborn support of the Iraq war, his vision of a long American occupation, his continued opposition to Roe vs. Wade, his embrace of the religious right and his unswerving faith in a market solution for everything.

Yet, we know of leaders of age who were able to adapt to a changing world after taking office. Only Charles de Gaulle had the stature to withdraw France from the nightmare of Algeria. Republican and former general Dwight Eisenhower got the United States out of Korea, kept American troops out of Vietnam and kept intact the reforms of the New Deal.

Conservative Ronald Reagan was in his 70s when he helped save Social Security for 75 years. He withdrew American troops from the maelstrom of Lebanon, forged meaningful arms agreements with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and stood in Red Square to declare the era of the "evil empire" over. While older presidents have grown in office, some younger men have shrunk.

However, there is one real problem that anyone faces, but especially an older person who is subjected to the stresses and physical and mental strains of the presidency - the possible decline of health. Franklin Roosevelt died in office of a massive stroke. Eisenhower suffered a heart attack in 1955 that hospitalized him for nearly two months, but he was re-elected the following year. Lyndon Johnson had gall bladder surgery in 1965 and heart problems that eventually killed him after he was out of office.

Reagan, who was in good physical condition when he came into office at age 69 and survived an assassin's bullet, had two serious operations. In 1985, at age 74, he was operated on for colon cancer and bounced back quickly. But his recovery from a prostate operation in 1987 was much slower. Because he died from complications of Alzheimer's disease, questions remain about whether it affected any part of his presidency.

McCain was injured when his plane was shot down in 1967, and he endured torture when he was a prisoner of the North Vietnamese. While his physical and mental health are said to be good, he was operated on in 2000 to remove from his face and neck a malignant melanoma, an especially dangerous type of skin cancer, which he has had three times. He is now cancer-free but still has checkups.

Thus, as Scheer writes, if age is to be a factor in the coming race - and influential Pew pollster Andrew Kohut says it will be - perhaps the most important issue may be whom McCain chooses as a running mate.

Voters' changing mind-set on age

THE AGING OF AMERICA may mean voters are more likely to elect a septuagenarian president.

TWELVE YEARS AGO, 27 percent of Americans said Republican

presidential candidate Bob Dole, then 72, was too old to be president.