From Buttigieg to Sanders, age matters
Democrats ignore it at their own risk in 2020
When you vote for a leader who is a senior citizen, the technical term for that is a crapshoot. You don’t know if you will be getting a House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, at the top of her public game at 79, or a President Donald Trump, whose cognitive slip-ups are accelerating at 72.
Some voters may decide they care less about youthful energy than the experience of a Bernie Sanders (77) or a Joe Biden (76). That risks the “wrong for the moment” problem of candidates who have not adapted to changing times or, as Biden put it, the changing meaning of “personal space.” Beyond that, it raises the risk of a president who is more likely than someone younger to become physically or mentally incapacitated (or worse) in office.
Maybe you’ll get a Ronald Reagan (nearly 70 when first sworn in) whose running mate, George H.W. Bush, was a former congressman, United Nations ambassador, party chair and CIA director. But maybe you will get a John McCain, whose age (72) and cancer history made it imperative in 2008 that he pick a confidence-inspiring vice president. Instead, he tapped Sarah Palin. The point is, you never know. South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg put these questions into sharp relief Sunday when he officially entered the race for the 2020 Democratic nomination. He is having a surgelet moment, winning so much attention some people now even know how to pronounce his name (BOOT-edge-edge). Why would this be happening to a 37-year-old gay Christian mayor from a small Indiana city? Most likely it’s because, as Dayton, Ohio, mayor Nan Whaley put it Sunday, “he is the polar opposite in every way of Donald Trump.”
The president spent a 50-year real estate development career gaming and cheating the system to make and keep as much money as possible. He did not serve in office or the military and did not trouble himself to learn about the U.S. system of government, much less American values and first principles.
Buttigieg seems to understand all of that in his bones. His résumé is packed: Rhodes scholar who speaks seven languages, McKinsey & Company management consultant, Navy veteran who served in Afghanistan, eight-year mayor. He sounds sensible and unifying on the nation’s challenges, not incoherent and polarizing. At his kickoff rally, he channeled both Barack Obama (“running for office is an act of hope” and as a married gay man, how could he not believe in hope?) and Trump (“I do believe in American greatness”).
This is not a Buttigieg endorsement; Democrats have a wide, skilled field of aspirants with interesting backgrounds and policy ideas. And let’s face it, to many Americans, anyone but Trump would be an improvement.
Just this month, addressing the Republican Jewish Coalition, Trump seemed to forget that they were Republicans and Americans. “How the hell did you support President Obama?” he asked them. (They didn’t.) He also called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “your prime minister.”
That was just a few days after April 2, when Trump said his father had been born in Germany (actually, that was his grandfather; his father was born in New York); floated the (groundless) idea that wind farm noise causes cancer; and told Republicans to be “more paranoid” about elections because “I don’t like the way the votes are being tallied.”
In the 2016 primaries, Sanders got more votes from people under 30 than Trump and Hillary Clinton combined. This is not surprising, given his antiestablishment message and the choices available to them. This time, many Democratic prospects in their 30s, 40s and 50s would be an automatic generational contrast to Trump, and two in their late 60s (Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Washington Gov. Jay Inslee) offer a contrast by running toward the future: to save capitalism and the planet, respectively.
Seven of 10 Democrats and Democratic leaners in a Quinnipiac Poll last month said a candidate’s age is not important. As a person of a certain age, I feel comfortable saying it should be.
Jill Lawrence is commentary editor of USA TODAY and author of “The Art of the Political Deal: How Congress Beat the Odds and Broke Through Gridlock.”