Gerontocracy
A tweet has been circulating this week that listed the age of every US president at the time of taking office:
42 — Theodore Roosevelt
43 — John F. Kennedy
46 — Ulysses S. Grant
46 — Bill Clinton
47 — Grover Cleveland
47 — Barack Obama
48 — Franklin Pierce
49 — James K. Polk
49 — James A. Garfield
50 — Millard Fillmore
51 — John Tyler
51 — Chester A. Arthur
51 — Grover Cleveland
51 — William Howard Taft
51 — Calvin Coolidge
51 — Franklin D. Roosevelt
52 — Abraham Lincoln
52 — Jimmy Carter
54 — Martin Van Buren
54 — Rutherford B. Hayes
54 — William McKinley
54 — Herbert Hoover
54 — George W. Bush
55 — Warren G. Harding
55 — Lyndon B. Johnson
56 — Andrew Johnson
56 — Benjamin Harrison
56 — Woodrow Wilson
56 — Richard Nixon
57 — George Washington
57 — Thomas Jefferson
57 — James Madison
57 — John Quincy Adams
58 — James Monroe
60 — Harry S. Truman
61 — John Adams
61 — Andrew Jackson
61 — Gerald Ford
62 — Dwight D. Eisenhower
64 — Zachary Taylor
64 — George H. W. Bush
65 — James Buchanan
68 — William Henry Harrison
69 — Ronald Reagan
70 — Donald Trump
78 — Joe Biden
While Ronald Reagan took his age jokingly (“I am not going to exploit for political purposes my opponent’s youth and inexperience”), the age of this year’s presidential candidates does not provide much cause for humor.
This predicament is not a coincidence. America is increasingly ruled by a gerontocracy. The reason for this is that old politicians’ incentives are aligned with those of an establishment that wants to maintain the status quo and avoid at all costs that the societal cards could be reshuffled.
In the case of Biden one might go as far as arguing that his cognitive decline is a convenient circumstance for said establishment.
An ambitious and hopeful society should at least have some young leaders.
