Questioning the age of America's elderly leaders is a tale as old as time 

click to enlarge

If you want to trigger an old person, mention something about age. If your comment is anything less than the old saw that "wine gets better with age" or any variant of that, be prepared to face the wrath of seven gods should you make your old fart of an uncle feel old. He will turn on you faster than a nano-scale rotor, which spins at about 300 billion revolutions per minute.

I know, I know, one cannot trust the measurements of pure science these days. Thanks, MAGA. So, using a more identifiable analogy, casting an age aspersion as he cuts a Valentine's Day cake will cause your uncle's head to spin at about 2,550 rpm, or at about the same rate as an average Major League Baseball slider.

Still another way to put it is that should you mock his age, your uncle will turn on you faster than former President Donald J. Trump turns on anyone whom he feels has not delivered sufficient fealty to him—especially those in the science community.

It wasn't that very long ago that I wrote a piece here suggesting the United States was ready for a new generation of leaders. Ronald Reagan was our president at that time. He was seriously taunted for being too old to serve as president, with the words "senile old man" constantly cast at him. When Reagan ended his two terms of office, he was 77 years old.

Come Election Day 2024, the two leading male presidential candidates will each have more sun rotations than Reagan did when he left office—Donald Trump will be 78 and Joe Biden will be 81.

Well, it pissed people off that I suggested a yearning for younger high office holders. My pleas were not exactly logical, but it felt noble to turn over to a new generation the tools to build an America as great as they could expect it to become.

I did get my wish, in that every president elected between 1989 and 2020 was younger at their own inauguration than Reagan was. But that didn't go so hot, except for the years when Republicans began losing their ever-loving minds over Presidents Obama and Clinton—two fellows who, with their winning economies, made more money for Republicans than any Republican leader ever did in my lifetime.

I wrote similarly about age when President Obama left office. I was a lonely voice who was keen on the idea of keeping our presidential elections free of baby boomers such as myself.

My wish for that year didn't go well, of course, with the top-end baby boomer Trump winning the electoral college votes and taking his seat in U.S. history.

In 2020, I wished that if it had to be a Republican again sitting at the Resolute Desk, that it would be the Republican ghost of Reagan. But God doesn't answer wishes.

At least, that's what I was told by certain locals who were fond of defending the leadership capabilities of the elderly. It's hard to impress upon a population that electing to the presidency a fellow in his late 70s or beyond is not the greatest idea, when said population looks at the late 70s as prep school.

I can't say that they were wrong. Every LDS church leader in my lifetime has been in their 80s or 90s, it seems, and with pale exception, none appeared feeble or incapable. Then again, I don't know if they deal in matters such as our U.S. presidents do, like being active at golf or bicycle riding.

Such as it's been all these years, I've come to accept that having elderly leaders is my fate. That's likely a product of me getting older myself, having reached an age where everything I do is met with some measure of advice—"Hold on to the rails," "Did you take your vitamins?" "Why do you still wear that old sweater?" and "Who is your favorite performer of all time, Taylor Swift or Usher?" Huh?

Indeed, in one of my spates of clear thinking, I wrote a column about 15 years ago saying I was too old to be writing opinion pieces, and I'd love to read the expression of younger voices. Many readers of my generation told me to piss up a rope, taking the point that old people should not just drop out of the game. They were right and, as I look back, it's clear I got my wish: There are currently more young voices than ever in media—mostly social media—but they write in a snippet form of prose I don't understand.

I think they are called influencers. I asked a guy who runs a popular eatery in Salt Lake about influencers. He said they're all over the place, but they can't sell two hamburgers after Day 1. I think I know what he means.

I think he means that there are more messengers and message paths than ever out there, but they don't carry the big stick to when media channels delivered large audiences. Think of the Beatles in 1964. Could they change the world today? Where is the Walter Cronkite voice that all but ended our involvement in Vietnam?

In our new media, the voices are there, but the singular audiences are not. The audience is fractured to the point that we yak about whatever is sticky at any moment in time and, today, it appears to be the nano-scale rotor moment to rag on about the age of Biden or Trump more than their ability, honor, trust or integrity, or proximity to a jail cell.

But I only trust one elderly uncle to hand me a piece of cake on this Valentine's Day: Joe Biden. I think I have a fair idea of where his hands have not been.

Send comments to john@cityweekly.net