Ageism

February 2, 2022

I am getting a little sensitive about ageism in my golden years. I know that I have lost more than a step going to first and that I can hear my drives land, which is fortunate because I certainly can’t see them, but I am just as good as I never was as long as I can take a nap. I am not as old as Joe Biden (or Donald Trump or Mitch McConnell), but I do know that nothing gets easier. However, characterizing President Biden as feeble and cognitively-impaired is pernicious. I hear this argument from some of the most disingenuous people on television, who wish they could use cognitive impairment to excuse their own ignorance. Biden accorded himself well, if not perfectly, in a two hour press conference recently, even handling some questions from “dumb son-of-a-bitches.”

Let’s put his age in historical perspective. In 1945, the alliance against Germany was led by Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Joseph Stalin. Their ages were 63, 71 and 70 respectively. We have to throw out FDR because he died that year after a life long struggle with polio. The average life expectancy (ALE) for a man in 1945 was 63.6 years. In other words, Churchill was 7 years beyond the ALE when he was leading Great Britain in WW II over Germany and a much younger Hitler (56). Stalin was 6 years beyond the ALE as he led Russia. Today, the ALE for a man is 76.1, which puts Biden (79) only 3 years beyond.

You don’t have agree with Biden’s policies or even like him as a person, but using age as an attack line is lazy. As Ronald Reagan, 73, famously said to Walter Mondale in a presidential debate, “I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent’s youth and inexperience.” Similarly, I am not going to exploit the malicious ignorance of Biden’s detractors.