Ask Google Blogs about "John McCain" and "too old," you get 2,837 hits. Even excluding "Chuck Norris," you still get 1,833. So they're talking about it: if I do the arithmetic right, McCain would be 72 next January 20, and 80 at the end of a second term, the oldest president ever.
The current record-holder, Ronald Reagan, took office just a month shy of his 70th birthday., As McCain's age-mate, I am in a good position to remember the runup to the Reagan presidency in 1980. Did people say that Reagan was too old? My recollection is--yeah, but they didn't talk about it nearly as much as they are talking about it with McCain.
What's the difference? I don't think it's a mere two-plus years, 72 to (almost) 70. I think it is, first, that McCain seems old--not "dessicated and enfeebled" old, but "ornery old coot" old. And the showpiece of his resumé is his time in the prison camp. The Vietnam War says "ancient history" to most voters. The prison camp says "brutalization," which is not consonant with "Morning in America."
And that is the flip side. Reagan's signature--what made his enemies so crazy--was his sunny insouciance. Free-associate McCain, you get torture and abuse. Free-associate Ronald Reagan, you get Jane Wyman and Bonzo.
I'm not delighted with the prospect of a McCain presidency, but it's not the age thing--if anything, I suspect he may be more suited to the job after 20 years in the Senate than he would have been as a callow young buck. It's his crankiness that gets me, along with the appearance of being generally ill-informed (even though I suspect he is less ill informed now than he was then). And I really think he means it when he says we should stay in Iraq for 100 years. But here is one consolation: at least neither he nor I will be around to see the end of that one.
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