Age and the US presidency: Is 80 too old?
I am 81 years old.
I am not running for President of the United States.
Eighty is an age that consumes relentlessly. It presents visual challenges, plays with the mind, messes with the limbs, garbles syntax, disassociates memory from fact.
To name a few.
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Also among the many reasons I am not running for the presidency is that few people have actually heard of me, and many of those who have might not consider me to be presidential timber.
That brings us to Joe Biden: Though I very much dislike his policies, I wince but don’t laugh at his gaffes and valiant attempts to gracefully recover his ‘pratfalls.’ I have learned that 80-year-old bodies don’t always synchronize with 80-year-old optical perceptions.
That said, we don’t need adolescent presidents either. Theodore Roosevelt, John Kennedy, and Bill Clinton taught us that, along with other political leaders.
In one of his columns, George Will called to mind Teddy Roosevelt. Cecil Spring Rice, a British diplomat, was a close friend of Roosevelt, and was best man at Roosevelt’s wedding. People would ask Rice about Roosevelt’s true personality. “You must always remember that the president is about six,” Rice would reply.
The sexual appetites of both Kennedy and Clinton indicated that they at least had made it into adolescence — but not much beyond, as their antics inside and outside the White House would suggest.
Joe Biden would be the oldest president in history if he is re-elected in 2024.
Trump would be the second oldest president if he is elected in 2024.
I worked in the Nixon White House during the build-up to the Watergate debacle. My role was so lofty and important that on the day when the nation was holding its breath while Henry Kissinger announced the end of the Vietnam War, I was appointed to escort Colonel Sanders of fried chicken fame on a tour of the White House grounds. Nevertheless, I sometimes reflect on the irony of an old political veteran like Nixon being brought down by a scandal largely engineered by adolescent, inexperienced aides.
Thankfully, my immediate boss was Harry S. Dent, one of the grown-ups in the Nixon inner circle. However, Harry was pushed out of that elite group because he wouldn’t go along with what later would be called “dirty tricks,” even before Watergate.
Ironically, Bob Haldeman, Nixon’s White House chief of staff, said Harry was excluded from the inner circle because he was “too much of a ‘Boy Scout’.”
So, there is an important role for elderly statespersons in the White House — if not as president, then at least near enough to the oval office to give sound counsel to the chief of state.
Dr. George Shultz, who later became Ronald Reagan’s Secretary of State, was the leader of a delicate project to which I had also been assigned. There were several young tigers on the team. I can still see in my memory Dr. Shultz tempering us young appointees with his seasoned wisdom, though he was in the borderlands of old age himself (he would live to be 100 years old).
In 1976 After leaving the White House, I wrote a book, The White House Mystique (published by Fleming H. Revell). One of the chapters was titled, “The White House ‘Warp’," which I described like this: “The ‘warp’ means that reality filters into the White House as through a prism. It is colored, disordered, bent as it flows in … One seeking to deal with real-world problems doesn’t always have a fix on things as they are, but things as they appear.”
The fact of the “warp” only adds to the complexity of being an 80-something President, or, even more challenging for one seeking to lead who struggles with a strange mix of old age and adolescence at the same time.
This would drive me to my knees if I could get up again.
Another downside of an elderly president is that he or she might conclude that because of their years, they are wiser, and don’t need the wisdom of others. Sadly, Lyndon Johnson proved this, especially in the tragic mismanagement of the Vietnam War. That conflict is remembered by many as a prime example of what can happen when a war of that scale is managed by politicians rather than military commanders on the field of battle.
Many might agree that “people who need people are the luckiest people in the world” as go the lyrics of the famous song by Jule Styne and Bob Merrill.
In a place where truth and facts are warped, it is vital that leaders have wise, battle-strengthened “people” who will counsel them — no matter how young or old the officeholder or how old and tested especially the giver of wisdom. Leaders of all ages need counselors who will, as the song says, call out “when they are too close to the edge … someone to catch them when they are dancing on a ledge” … and especially someone to pray for them.
We may elect an elderly president in 2024, but we must hope this person will also gather advisors who are old enough to have great wisdom and young enough to help the president understand the trials and tribulations of that moment and how to manage them.
After all, the Bible says, “Remember the days of old; consider generations long past. Ask your father and he will tell you, your elders, and they will explain it to you” (Deuteronomy 32:7).
Wallace B. Henley is a former pastor, daily newspaper editor, White House and Congressional aide. He served 18 years as a teaching pastor at Houston's Second Baptist Church. Henley is author or co-author of more than 25 books, including God and Churchill, co-authored with Sir Winston Churchill's great grandson, Jonathan Sandys. Henley's latest book is Who will rule the coming 'gods'? The looming spiritual crisis of artificial intelligence.
