See beyond presidential candidates’ age

Americans are grappling with concepts of age and ability as applied to the most powerful position in government. In February, an ABC News/ Ipsos poll indicated that 86% of Americans think that President Joe Biden, 81, is too old for a second term. Fifty-nine percent say the same thing about 77-year-old Donald Trump.

Biden is already the oldest person to serve as president. He broke Trump’s record, set when he took office at age 70 in 2016.

It’s not fair to judge their ages against presidents from the 19th century, or even most of the 20th century, not with advances in diet, medicine and general understandings of mental and physical health.

Today’s 81-year-old Joe Biden actually might have more vitality, energy and mental acuity than, say, William Henry Harrison, who was 68 when he took office in 1841 and died just 31 days later.

So, how old is truly too old to handle the mental and physical rigors of the U.S. presidency?

The answer, according to Bradley Willcox, a geriatrics researcher at the University of Hawaii Mānoa, has less to do with “calendar age” than “biological age,” determined by how well the brain and body functions.

Willcox and University of Illinois Chicago epidemiologist Jay Olshansky, cited in a recent article by reporter Carson Gerber, say that both Biden and Trump are biologically young, relatively speaking.

While each has been known to occasionally lose his way during speaking engagements, they have the earmarks of people functioning at a high level.

Of course, there are concerns. For example, Trump’s father had Alzheimer’s and Trump’s heart health has been jeopardized by his poor diet and distaste for exercise.

Yes, health dangers loom on the horizon for people as they age. But it’s a greater danger to our country when we disqualify people based on advanced age, thereby forfeiting their decades of experience rising to all manner of challenges.

It’s OK to dislike either candidate because of his policy positions, his record of service or even his personality or energy level. But to disqualify either based merely on their age is blatant prejudice.

“It sounds like institutionalized age discrimination to me,” Olshansky said. “All you’ve done is created a circumstance where you prevent people, who are perfectly capable of what they’re doing, from doing it.”