IS HILLARY TOO OLD FOR 2016?
If Hillary Clinton made her widely anticipated bid for the presidency, would her age become a legitimate issue? Skeptics have already taken to the Internet to raise their concerns. If Clinton won election in 2016, at age 69, she would be just months younger than our oldest president, Ronald Reagan, when he was elected in 1980. Only one other candidate in 225 years (William Henry Harrison) moved into the White House past age 65, and his health proved so fragile that he contracted pneumonia on inauguration day in 1841 and died a month later. In fact, about half of the 43 men who have held the nation’s top office withered and died well before even reaching Hillary’s 2016 Election Day age.
The last half-century of presidential history served to shield the American people from such brutal truths about presidential mortality. The assassination of John F. Kennedy in 1963, a defining events for Clinton and her fellow Baby Boomers, marked the
No, she’d have better luck than past presidents
last time a chief executive died in office. But before that bloody day in Dallas, during a sad span of 122 years, sitting presidents perished with revolting regularity.
Harrison died four weeks into his term in 1841, and Zachary Taylor succumbed to mysterious digestive ailments nine years later. Assassins killed Abraham Lincoln in 1865, James Garfield in 1881 and William McKinley in 1901. Circulatory problems claimed Warren Harding in 1923, and a cerebral hemorrhage dispatched Franklin Roosevelt in 1945. All these disasters struck presidents younger than Hillary would be on her first day in office.
But a balanced response to concerns over Clinton’s age reveals recent, relevant changes in presidential life spans that should reassure the former first lady and her supporters.
No president since Lyndon Johnson has died before age 81, and four of the six longest-lived presidents (Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and Jimmy Carter) have held the office since 1974.
This reflects the increase in life expectancy for all of us. In 1963, life expectancy stood at 69 years, but now we can anticipate survival to 79 — a gift of 10 extra years.
Another factor working in Hillary’s favor: Women live longer than men by five years (sorry, Bill). This means that a typical woman born in 1947 (as was Hillary) can expect to live an average of 20 more years after today — enough to cover not only the two terms as president that her fans desire, but an additional ten years as U.N. secretary-general, chief justice of the Supreme Court or president of Yale.
Even the threat of assassinations offers less lethal risks than in the 19th century. When a would-be killer shot President Reagan in the chest in 1981, modern medical science allowed the Gipper to recover. Garfield and McKinley both lost their lives to less grievous wounds. By the same token, contemporary advances could have likely saved Harrison, Taylor and Harding from the mystifying maladies that confounded physicians then.
None of this means that a person of Clinton’s age won’t face significant health risks under the unimaginable pressures of presidential service. Like any other candidate, she must release records detailing every aspect of her personal medical history. When her husband, Bill, first ran for president at age 46, he could get away with providing only selective access to his medical records. Hillary, at age 69, should set a different standard.
Health and durability remain appropriate concerns for her candidacy or for any other contender over 60. But with advancing life expectancy and the marvels of modern medicine, her age itself provides scant basis for concern.