In an effort that mirrors the prevailing attitudes of Americans everywhere, Texan voters rejected a proposal in their state “which would have raised the mandatory retirement age for state judges from 75 to 79 — effectively allowing for older elected officials” as Nathaniel Rakich of ABC News reports. We see this rejection of aged political leaders continue in Scott Detrow and Connor Donevan of NPR’s interview of older voters. They found that many of these voters, knowing what they know about the aging process, thought it was time for a new generation of political leaders to take the reins. As interviewee David Reckless put it regarding the current presidential election, “My personal opinion is that neither one [Joe Biden and Donald Trump] should be running. Things go downhill in a hurry sometimes, and I think both of them are in pretty good health right now, but two, three, four years down the road, I’d be concerned about that.”
The stakes for how American voters perceive the age of the president are higher than ever before as NPR notes that Americans will likely choose between the country’s oldest-ever president, and its second oldest. Joseph Biden is now 80 years old with Donald Trump following close behind at 77 years of age. Despite the candidates near negligible age difference, voters are consistently more concerned with President Biden’s age in comparison to Trump’s. This in part is due to diligent reporting on Biden’s stumbles, falls, and incoherent speeches. However, when considering the relative shape that each candidate is in, it seems like Donald Trump is worse off in other ways. In the age game, it seems that both candidates are losing.
Dave Levinthal of the Insider reported in 2022 that the ages of the presidents are not the only thing increasing over the years as “nearly one in four members of Congress are in their 70s or 80s — a level never before seen in US history.” The problem many Americans have with this is that fact that this is not at all representative of the American public as “almost 50% of Americans are under 40, but only about 5% of members of Congress are.” America’s ever aging population cannot keep up with the speed at which Congress and the government as a whole is rapidly approaching their 70’s and 80’s.
It really does seem as if America is ruled by the old, but is that a problem? Some argue that age brings with it wisdom, others argue that it brings with it technological incompetence. The clearest example of this technological illiteracy in recent years could be found in Congress’s hearing on regulating Facebook. The lawmakers asked a series of bizarre questions that revealed their basic lack of technological understanding with the most infamous exchange being between Senator Hatch and Mark Zuckerberg. Despite the hearing being about Facebook’s ad practices, Hatch asked how Facebook could be a sustainable business model if they did not charge users. Zuckerberg laid out the basics of the case Hatch himself was supposed to be pursuing with this statement, “Senator, we run ads.”
But does technological literacy matter if one can depend on advisors when deciding policy on it? One voter interviewed by NPR, Preston Shimer, offered a different take regarding the age of the President, “You’re basically electing a team and therefore, I think it’s clear that I think that Biden has a far better team.” But the fact of the matter is, no matter how good the team is, the leader of that team is still making decisions that affect all Americans in drastic ways. As another interviewee, Rosalie Bablak, stated, “We have someone who sits in the Oval Office who’s going to touch the button if we are going to have nuclear war. I would like someone who is more quickly thinking.”
It is clear that age matters, and the American public’s views on whether it affects the mental capabilities of the aged may determine elections and thus the makeup of the government itself. As I stated before, the stakes are high, and now the American public has to decide what to do with the most geriatric government they have ever had. Are the negative aspects of age overexaggerated or is age actually an issue?
Kira Symington is a Dakota Student Section Editor. She can be reached at [email protected].
