Health and fitness a better question
How likely is their memory or overall mental acuity to decline?
After all, many neuroscientists question if President Ronald Reagan, 73 when reelected, showed signs of cognitive trouble during his second term. He was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s years after leaving office. Checkups do offer a clue. “A healthier heart, for example, is going to translate to a healthier brain,” said Dr. Anne Newman, who directs the University of Pittsburgh Center for Aging and Population Health.
Likewise some habits are critical: a good diet, exercise and enough sleep. Trump, a fast-food fan and late-night tweeter who doesn’t exercise regularly, has scoffed at that advice. Still, his doctor earlier this year said he’s overall in good health despite needing to lose weight and stick with cholesterollowering medicine.
But there’s no easy predictor.
“You can have a group of people who at age 80 are still going to work every day, doing all the stuff they need to do,” Newman said. “We’re not very good at understanding who’s going to be able to tolerate the stress in emergency situations,” like the 3 a.m. crises presidents so often must navigate.
Some experts have called for independent health exams for presidents and candidates of all ages, much like the fit-for-flight physicals that pilots undergo. To Newman, the grueling endurance contest that is a U.S. presidential campaign is a pretty good substitute.
That hasn’t stopped age, and a call for generational change, from affecting past elections.
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., faced questions about his fitness when seeking the presidency in 2008 at age 71 against then-Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., nearly 25 years his junior. During his 1984 reelection bid, Reagan famously promised not to take advantage of 56-yearold Democratic foe Walter Mondale’s “youth and inexperience.”
Today’s candidates likewise don’t think they’re too old.
Sanders told The Associated Press that voters “must and will judge candidates in terms of the totality of their being,” including their experience and records as well as their ages.
“I am very happy — well, I am lucky, I suppose — to tell you that I am in good health and have a great deal of endurance, and I would not have run for this job as president of the United States unless I thought I was absolutely, 100% physically able to do it,” he said in an interview during a recent campaign swing through South Carolina.
Two days later, Sanders was in Iowa tossing some pitches in a campaign-sponsored softball game and taking his turn at bat. Warren spent the week hopscotching from South Carolina to Iowa to Minnesota to California, an itinerary that might weary someone half her age, while Biden went from Massachusetts to Iowa.
Biden had a brush with death in 1988, requiring surgery to repair two brain aneurysms — weak bulges in arteries, one of them leaking. Medical records released in 2008 during Biden’s vice presidential campaign showed he’d made a full recovery with no trouble since.
Dr. Kevin O’Connor, who has treated Biden since he served as vice president, said in a statement provided by the campaign that Biden is “in excellent physical condition” and “more than capable of handling the rigors of the campaign.”
The stress of the Oval Office doesn’t shorten presidents’ lives, Olshansky reported in a 2011 study. Curious at the attention paid to Obama’s graying hair, Olshansky found that 23 of 34 presidents who had died of natural causes lived beyond the average life expectancy of men the same age when they were inaugurated.
What about the 2020 candidates? Olshansky used life insurance statistics to calculate average life expectancies of U.S. citizens of the same gender and age at inauguration as each candidate.
Not surprisingly, 37-year-old Pete Buttigieg, the youngest of the candidate crop, should have the most years ahead of him.
But by Olshansky’s calculations, the 70-somethings also would have great odds of surviving in office. Based on the average for their age, that’s a 76.8% chance for Sanders; 79.2% for Biden; 84.8% for Trump and, reflecting that women tend to outlive men, a 91.8% chance for Warren.