In Politics, How Old Is Too Old?

The New Yorker Radio Hour

WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

News, Wnyc, David, Arts, Yorker, Society & Culture, Storytelling, Books, New, Remnick, Politics

4.2 • 6.2K Ratings

🗓️ 13 January 2023

⏱️ 34 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

It wasn’t so long ago that Ronald Reagan was considered over the hill, too old to govern. Now a sitting President has turned eighty in office, and a Presidential contest between Joe Biden and Donald Trump would put two near-eighty-year-olds against each other. (Trump—while denying President Biden’s fitness—commented, “Life begins at eighty.”) Yet the question of age has not disappeared; even some of Biden’s ardent supporters have expressed concerns about him starting a second term. David Remnick talks with the gerontologist Jack Rowe, a professor at Columbia University who also founded Harvard Medical School’s Division on Aging, about how to evaluate a candidate’s competency for office; and with Jill Lepore and Jane Mayer, keen observers of the Presidency. Rowe argues that ageism underlies the public discourse; an occasional slip or unsteadiness, he thinks, is not consequential to the job. “If I give you a seventy-eight-year-old man with a history of heart disease, you don’t know if he’s in a nursing home or on the Supreme Court of the United States,” he tells Remnick. But Lepore and Mayer argue public opinion, and not only medical prognosis, should be considered seriously as we look at aging politicians. If Biden and Trump face off, Lepore says, “Age won’t be an issue between them. But age will be an issue for American voters. . . . I think of the young people that I teach everyday. They will be furious.” Mayer sees something anti-democratic in play as well. “Incumbency is such an advantage at this point,” she notes, that “it leads to gerontocracy,” because “it’s really hard to unseat someone.”

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker.
0:09.6	Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. We're going to have a conversation today that some people might find a little touchy, but why avoid it?
0:19.5	It's part of life, and at the moment it's a crucial aspect of public life.
0:24.4	We're going to talk about age in American politics, old age.
0:31.3	It wasn't so long ago, at least not to me, that Ronald Reagan was considered by many as over the hill, too old to govern.
0:40.9	But now we have a president who's turned 80 in the middle of his first term.
0:45.7	And even some of Joe Biden's supporters have expressed concerns about him starting a second turn.
0:52.4	If he wins and he endures, he'd be 86 at the end of it. Donald Trump,
0:57.4	who's still on the scene, insists that Biden, of course, isn't up to the job. Pretty strong words
1:02.7	from someone who was a decade past Social Security age. So we're going to hear today from two of our
1:09.1	keenest observers of American political life,
1:11.7	historian Jule Lippur and our Washington correspondent, Jane Mayer.
1:17.0	This is not a new problem.
1:19.3	I think of, you know, Strom Thurmond.
1:21.9	I think he left office at age 100, wasn't it?
1:25.9	But he only looked 99, so, you know, don't be hard.
1:30.1	But he and Jesse Helms, the two senators, sat through the Clinton impeachment, asleep.
1:39.9	First, though, I wanted to get some facts from a medical perspective.
1:44.0	Jack Rowe is an expert on the science of aging.
1:47.6	Dr. Rowe founded the Division on Aging at Harvard Medical School,
1:51.3	and he now serves as professor of health policy and aging at Columbia University.
1:59.1	I'd like to begin this conversation by asking you how you think about this, and help us how we should think about this first as a matter of medicine and as something that we can or cannot predict.
	...

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