I Don’t Care How Old A Politician Is

On 12/22/2021, Alec MacGills of ProPublica tweeted the following:

President: 79

Possible 2024 GOP nominee: 75

Speaker of House: 81

House Majority Leader: 82

House Whip: 81

Supreme Court Justice: 83

Most influential Covid authority: 80

Of course, this tweet led to a discussion on how important age is in politics, and if we should have some kind of limit on how old you can be if you want to be in government. The same day this was tweeted, Jett Heer of The Nation said:

It’s symptomatic of the weakness of USA political parties that they are instruments of party elders and don’t have much institutional purpose. In other countries, older leaders are pushed into retirement & younger cohorts cultivated in interest of parties.

During the 2020 Presidential Election, one of the points raised against Michael Bloombeg, Joe Biden, and Bernie Sanders (although rarely Donald Trump, oddly enough) was that they were all really old. The same point was raised against John McCain in 2008, Bob Dole in 1996, and Ronald Reagan in both 1980 and 1984.

Actually, Reagan is a funny story because he totally turned this argument around. During his second…