The New Yorker Radio Hour - In Politics, How Old Is Too Old?

Episode Date: January 13, 2023

It wasn’t so long ago that Ronald Reagan was considered over the hill, too old to govern. Now a sitting President has turned eighty in office, and a Presidential contest between Joe Biden and Donald Trump would put two near-eighty-year-olds against each other. (Trump—while denying President Biden’s fitness—commented, “Life begins at eighty.”) Yet the question of age has not disappeared; even some of Biden’s ardent supporters have expressed concerns about him starting a second term. David Remnick talks with the gerontologist Jack Rowe, a professor at Columbia University who also founded Harvard Medical School’s Division on Aging, about how to evaluate a candidate’s competency for office; and with Jill Lepore and Jane Mayer, keen observers of the Presidency. Rowe argues that ageism underlies the public discourse; an occasional slip or unsteadiness, he thinks, is not consequential to the job. “If I give you a seventy-eight-year-old man with a history of heart disease, you don’t know if he’s in a nursing home or on the Supreme Court of the United States,” he tells Remnick. But Lepore and Mayer argue public opinion, and not only medical prognosis, should be considered seriously as we look at aging politicians. If Biden and Trump face off, Lepore says, “Age won’t be an issue between them. But age will be an issue for American voters. . . . I think of the young people that I teach everyday. They will be furious.” Mayer sees something anti-democratic in play as well. “Incumbency is such an advantage at this point,” she notes, that “it leads to gerontocracy,” because “it’s really hard to unseat someone.” New Yorker Radio Hour listeners, we want to hear from you.  We have a few questions about the show and how you listen to it. The survey takes about twenty minutes, and your feedback will help us make our podcast better.  Take the survey here.

This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. We're going to have a conversation today that some people might find a little touchy, but why avoid it? It's part of life, and at the moment it's a crucial aspect of public life. We're going to talk about age in American politics, old age. It wasn't so long ago, at least not to me. that Ronald Reagan was considered by many as over the hill, too old to govern. But now we have a president who's turned 80 in the middle of his first term,

and even some of Joe Biden's supporters have expressed concerns about him starting a second turn. If he wins and he indoors, he'd be 86 at the end of it. Donald Trump, who's still on the scene, insists that Biden, of course, isn't up to the job. pretty strong words from someone who was a decade past Social Security age. So we're going to hear today from two of our keenest observers of American political life, historian Jewelopor and our Washington correspondent, Jane Mayer. This is not a new problem. I think of, you know, Strom Thurmond.

I think he left office at age 100, wasn't it? But he only looked 99, so, you know, don't be hard. But he and Jesse Helms, the senator, The two senators sat through the Clinton impeachment asleep. First, though, I wanted to get some facts from a medical perspective. Jack Rowe is an expert on the science of aging. Dr. Rowe founded the Division on Aging at Harvard Medical School, and he now serves as Professor of Health Policy and Aging at Columbia University.

I'd like to begin this conversation by asking you, how you think about this, and help us how we should think about this first as a matter of medicine and as something that we can or cannot predict. I think if we start with just the facts, the facts are confusing for people, because you can read that the average life expectancy in the United States is 78, which is true. So is somebody who's 80 on borrowed time, it's understandable that people would think that those people are really on the way out. But the fact is, life expectancy on average is 78 at birth.

But if you make it to 80, your life expectancy is on average another 10 years. I think the conversation, though, is not about life expectancy. The conversation is about looking at the presidency as an extremely difficult, high-stress job, that demands a lot, ideally, of the officeholder intellectually, politically, and just in sheer physical stamina, and wondering if it's in the case of Joe Biden or anyone, even at this late date when life expectancies, as you say, have gotten longer, particularly for people who've

had good medical care, whether that's a good idea or a bad idea. Yeah. I think that there is an exaggeration of the importance of the importance of. of some of the characteristics that occur with advancing age. President Biden has some verbal slips that he makes. Maybe they're more common than they used to be. Maybe not. He seems to be a little frail in walking.

Franklin Roosevelt couldn't walk at all. He was pretty effective president. So drawing a straight line between the inability to walk as well as you did before or ride a bike quite as well. He rides a bike. The fact that he rides a bike at all. was impressive, but I do think, obviously, that older people are more frail than younger people. That's not deny that.

Just for the record, I'm 64. How old are you? I'm 78. Fair enough. Okay. And I think, let's even, I hope you don't mind my asking. I voted for Joe Biden, did you? Yes.

And do you think that influences the way you see this? No. The two candidates were very similar in age from my point of view. Age wasn't a factor. The fundamental finding here of decades of research, David, is that the older people become the less like each other they become. All 30 or 40-year-olds are pretty much the same in terms of the kidney function or lung function, immune function, cardiac function, even cognitive function.

But as you get out to 80, there's tremendous heterogeneity. And while the average 80-year-old is quite a bit lower in function, than the average 30-year-old on many factors, there are always 80-year-olds who perform like the average 30-year-old. Does Joe Biden seem like what? No, again, you have not examined him, we should still. No, obviously. Nor have I read his medical records.

But you watch him on television and follow the news as carefully as you can. So those are the limits of your... So when we look at the drivers of this variability, successful ages, people in the top quartile, are white, well-educated, financially secure, and have a good social structure there, not alone. The average life expectancy between an educated, white, well-off, married man, and a poor, black, uneducated, single man is 13 years. So when we look at people like President Biden, we look at kind of super-agers. My colleagues and I at Harvard years ago did a study

of very successfully aging 75-year-olds, and we studied their cognitive performance and their physical performance in detail. We followed them for six years. 50% of them did much less well than they had at the outset, but 25% of them didn't change, starting at age 75 or 76. Remarkable.

We're talking about somebody who will be closer to 90 then he will be to 80 if he has a second term and lives it. Yes. I'm not trying to paint a picture which is denying aging. I'm just trying to clarify what it is that we actually know. It seems to me what's going on. It's usually purely either a political weapon or other people perhaps not wanting to discuss it at all

for fear of giving points to the other side. Completely, completely. And I think one of the dimensions that's worth considering here is psychological changes. There have been a number of studies published recently showing that older people fared much better during COVID than the younger people. They had more emotional balance. And this is consistent with the literature showing that they have less anger, less fear, less sadness, that they react less negatively to things that happen in the environment. Fair enough, but let me put a little bit of pressure on your points here.

Sure. When we observe President Biden, who I think, from my point of view anyway, has had a certain number of really considerable successes, both in foreign policy and domestic policy, in the last couple of years, when I see him in a press conference, I see a press conference very often organized to have minimal questions. He has cards in which he very often picks up and starts reading from. there's not the same fluidity that you would have recognized in, say, in Obama or any number of other presidents, whether you like them or not. It seems pretty clear to me that his staff, recognizing his strengths and his limitations, have come up with workarounds to deal with this, and it might not get better. How do you respond to that? Well, I wouldn't be surprised at all if that were the case. The question is, is that disqualifying?

It doesn't invoke tremendous confidence, but at the same time, I don't feel that some of those factors, or his age, or even aspects of medical history, explain how he's going to function. I tell my students, if you're going to see an elderly man, and he's 78 years old, and he's had it's a history of a heart. attack and high blood pressure. And that's the only information I give you. You can't tell me whether that man is in a nursing home or on the Supreme Court of the United States. One of the other psychological dimensions that I find interesting is that older people repeatedly in studies have been shown to solve disagreements between various parties better than younger people. Younger people strive for justice in what they view as justice. Older people tend to strive for win-win situations. We all remember the Reagan years, or at least I do, and certainly you do. No matter what you thought

about Ronald Reagan's politics, I think it's fair to say that in the standard intellectual sense, he was never a giant. But there came a time when he began showing distinct deficits and not long after he left office, it was announced that he, in fact, had Alzheimer's. These kinds of conditions are not like a light switch. It's not off one day and on the next. How much concern should we have when we look at a politician, somebody with great responsibility in his or her hands, who's in their 80s, having that kind of decline, not forgetting names, not, not, you know, know, I can't find my keys. It sounds like you have trouble with names.

I'm getting there. I'm getting there. So we're taking that off the table. Damn right. That's normal. That's exactly right. That's normal. You read my mind, such as it is.

But, you know, how do we think about that? Of course, cognitive impairment increases with advancing age. Your chance of having Alzheimer's disease is probably 10% at age 65 and four times that at age 85. It's a big difference. Huge. There is a large group of people who have what is called mild cognitive impairment. And some of those go on to have Alzheimer's disease and some don't. I don't think from what I can see, and I watch a lot of news, political news, of President Biden or even former President Trump, that they have any evidence of cognitive impairment at this stage.

If they were having significant cognitive impairment, they shouldn't run for office, period. Now, the question is, should be giving you a test of some sort? I'm asking. Yeah. I wouldn't be against it. You remember that fantastic moment with Trump described that he had been given a cognitive test? Like you'll go person, woman, man, camera, TV. 10 minutes, 15, 20 minutes later, and say, remember the first question?

not the first, but the 10th question, give us that again. Can you do that again? And you go, person, woman, man, camera, TV. They say, that's amazing. How did you do that? I do it because I have, like, a good memory because I'm cognitively there. That doesn't seem to me an adequate test. There are a very standard test that have been given to millions of people.

That's not one of them. What are they like? a simple one called the mini mental state exam, where they'll start by asking what date it is and who the president is and where we are, and then they'll ask you to draw a pentagram or something like that. Then they'll ask you some questions. When I was training at the Massachusetts General Hospital, I used to tell patients at the beginning of the interview that number 12, Walnut Street on Beacon Hill has a red door. Repeat that sentence.

So there's number 12, there's Walnut Street, Beacon Hill, red door, right? Forefax. Things like that. Okay, but a president of the United States not only has to deal with that sentence, he or, God willing,

someday, she has to deal with trying to figure out fiscal policy, how to cope with China and Taiwan, Ukraine crisis and the absolute fire hydrant of daily crisis that come at a present on daily basis. This is not a nine to five job. This is not being, you know, dad who comes in three days a week to deal with the family real estate, a business while the son or daughter is actually running. It's the presidency. It's consuming in a way that turns them all gray and prematurely old.

What effect does that have on one intellectually and physically, that level of stress? I think it's tremendously variable in general by the time people get to be running for president of the United States. I think they've differentiated themselves into the group of people who handled it pretty well. I think President Biden has been a politician a long time. Since his 30s. Some people say too long. I think these people are selected into a group. Anybody who can run a presidential campaign, talk about are they going to make it?

Are they going to get too tired? etc. The presidential campaign is the test if you can make it through the campaign. That's harder than being president, I would imagine, in some ways. How much of your viewpoint is influenced by the fact that we live longer and longer? And do you conceive of a day when somebody could easily be president into his or her 90s? Yes, I do. I do think that we're going to see the emergence of individuals, more individuals, who are fully capable. cognitively, physically and psychologically, to maintain very high function,

very, very advanced stages. So certainly from a medical point of view, you, I would guess, are against any age limits for high office, whether it's Supreme Court or the Senate or the presidency? Or anything. Or anything. I mean, it's not realistic.

Not only against age limits, but I'm furious about something that we are assessing. seeing repeatedly, and that is old age is not a disease, okay? Old people are sick because they're sick, not because they're old. They're more likely to get sick if they're old, of course. But when Prince Philip died, the palace said he died of old age. That was a great setback. We are trying to differentiate age from disease. What did he die? I don't know. But nobody dies.

of old age. Then when his wife died, more recently, they did it again, even though there was this out. Queen Elizabeth. Queen Elizabeth, God bless her. And geriatric medicine in England is very powerful, very well established, more so than the U.S. They couldn't get them to say, you know, because they didn't want to label her with it at disease. And then just when the dust settled, the Vatican said, Benedict died of old days. And it's just tears my hair. If I had hair, I'd tear it out. So that's ageism. Yeah. That's a concrete, specific evidence of ageism. When Biden mistakenly

asks if a deceased congresswoman is in the audience, including bipartisan elect officials like representative governor, Senator Braun, Senator Booker, Representative Jackie, are you here? Where's Jackie? I think she was going to be here. Or he appears to doze off at a at a meeting where he falls off his bike or trips while boarding Air Force One, and on and on and on. Yeah.

You think what the hell? That's irrelevant. I think that's what 80-year-olds do. Am I surprised to see that? No. Would I put him in the rehab unit? No. I don't believe that what we see, which is attributable to his age, is likely to importantly impair his function as president of the United States,

and I think he probably has some other attributes that certainly mitigate any adverse effect of what we see. On balance, I think he's a very successful and fortunate 80-year-old. Jack Rowe is Professor of Health Policy and Aging at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health. We're going to continue the conversation about aging and political. political life in a moment, and I'll be back with Jane Mayer and Jillipur. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. Stick around. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. We're talking today about age and the presidency, about how old is too old to be in the White House if there is such a number. Now, I spoke earlier in the program with Dr. Jack Rowe, a specialist in the science of aging,

and his argument is this. As long as your health is good at 80, odds are you'll be fine, for a term in the Oval Office. It's no matter if you're less nimble on your feet, he thinks there's a lot of ageism going on, particularly when it comes to Joe Biden. But this is a very complicated issue, and we're going to look at it from some other angles now, including a historical perspective.

I think it's worth noting the change, right? Because first of all, you think just historically, right? In 1790, when 35 was made the minimum age requirement for the presidency, Life expectancy for men was, I think, 44. It's 77 now. Staff writer Jill Lippoor is a historian at Harvard University, and she joined me along with Jane Mayer, the New Yorker's chief Washington correspondent.

So what should be the theme song from this, When I get older? What do you think? Kids are different today. 64 is so young. I know, 64 is way too young for these people. Oh, my God. Well, let's look at this historically first, Jill.

Woodrow Wilson had a stroke, and I think his wife basically ran the White House for quite a long time. What is the history of this aging, cognitive difference over time? What is the history of it and what does it tell you in contemporary terms? So I think historically the 1920s are the real turning point because life expectancy had risen quite a bit. By then, in the 1920s is really when retirement is invented. Geriatrics is invented. The kind of study of old age is founded in the 1920s. So that's when people first start getting really worried about it, noticing that presidents are getting old or not so much inaugurated in their 50s, but maybe into their 60s.

And then you start seeing people saying, I won't run because I'm too old. Charles Evans Hughes is pressed in to seek the nomination in 1920s, maybe 66, something he says I'm too old. Remember, Eisenhower has a heart attack in office, but before he leaves office, he says any man whose 70 should never hold this office. So 70 really is the benchmark into the rise of Ronald Reagan. Jane, when you watch Joe Biden and you've watched him for decades now as a professional politician, are you concerned? Well, I mean, he's never been a nimble speaker, but I think he's less. now. And so, you know, I think also I hear the talk around the White House is that he can be cranky and is particularly testy around the issue of his age, hates the question about it. And

of course he does. I hate the issue. Right. And his answer is always, well, just watch me. You know, so everybody actually, of course, is watching him very closely. You know, in the period that I have covered the sort of presidents. I came in covering Reagan, who at the time when he was elected in 1980, he was 69 years old, I think. And then what I think we've seen in this modern period is age creep that's relatively, you know, fast moving. So that you then had with Trump, when he was elected in 2016, he was 70 years old. So he's older than breaking the record with Reagan. And then you get with Biden 2020, he was 77.

But here's what I see. Here's what the pushback would be, certainly from the White House, that Joe Biden, in a very complicated and sui-generous political race, beat Donald Trump, beat him soundly. as it turned out, and has had an enormous number of accomplishments, whether you like them or not, in foreign policy and in domestic policy in the course of two years. Do you sense that he's being, okay, he's cranky. Bill Clinton was cranky. You know, we can all be cranky. But when the rubber meets the road, is he being hurt by his age? Is there any evidence of that in your reporting or anyone else's? What I think you have to say is that, first of all, I don't know. It's very hard for a reporter to get the truth on this particular subject because one of the things that I've learned is that presidents and other very powerful politicians are surrounded by AIDS and consultants and a whole village of people who status derives from them.

whose livings often derived from them, and they do cover for the person on the inside. And that's a good point. You broke a story that everybody kind of knew about but failed to write about is that Diane Feinstein, who's been a senator for a very long time in California, was clearly having cognitive difficulties. Tell us that story and how it does or does not relate to Joe Biden. Yeah, I mean, it's incredibly sad. She is now, I think, 89 years old. She's still in the Senate. And one of her colleagues said to me that, you know, it's painful to watch her. She forgets that she's been briefed on things. She forgets that she's just answered a question or asked a question and repeats the question. One of her colleagues said to me, she is using the Senate as an assisted living facility and she shouldn't be here. That's pretty rough. It was really rough.

And these are people who really respect and admire her. And what they're seeing is a magnificent career diminished. And again, what was interesting to me in reporting on this was it was clear that in 2018, when she ran for re-election, the people who ran that campaign and who, they knew. But there are so many reasons why they push a politician forward and cover such things. up. I mean, in this case, Chuck Schumer actually had to speak with Diane Feinstein and get her to step down from being chairman of the Judiciary Committee because she was unable to carry out her duties as chairman. And it was a terrible situation. I had to keep talking to her. And then she would forget

that he'd spoken to her. And another colleague said to me, it was harder than trying to take the keys away from your parents. I do think there's a kind of broader cultural issue that we haven't really touched on, which is sort of, I think, effectively the disenfranchisement of the young, sort of the inability of people to kind of pass on the baton generationally. I mean, you could really approve of Biden's performance, although most Americans do not, but you still would wonder, doesn't the Democratic Party have more of a young bench of people who really want to be coming up? And you think, I mean, people may have seen the Futurama episode from the 90s that kind of comes of the Reagan moment and Richard Nixon's disembodied head

kept in ajar runs for president and pins attached to the robotic body of the headless robotic body of Spirot of Earth. Nixon's back! And that's how kind of the, you know, that Simpson's generation of writers who grew up in the Reagan era pictured the future of American politics. We'd be, you know, running against the dead head of Richard Nixon. And I think for young people, it feels that way. Who's kicking who around?

No. It raises questions to me somewhat about why is it that the Senate and is so old and our candidates seem so old and is it not to some extent a reflection of a systemic problem that is also a problem with our democracy here, which is that incumbency is such an advantage at this point because of our campaign finance system. You get so much, it's so much easier to get reelected when you're in. office. And when you're, you know, the longer you're in office, you get more seniority. It gets easier and easier to raise funds. All the lobbyists throw money at you when you're a committee chairman. And I think the process is, you know, it leads to gerontocracy. It's very hard to unseat someone. On the other hand, Jill, I have to think, and I don't know historically whether age has been used as a weapon in presidential campaigns, but I can't imagine that if Ron DeSantis gets the nomination in 2024, we won't hear about Biden's age a lot. Yeah, I don't think there's a real political price to be paid for calling attention to someone's age.

Right. I just like, we could say that's ageism. Your other guests could say that's ageism, but I don't know that there's, you know, at the level of vote getting anything but an advantage to make an issue of someone's age. Reagan fanously deflected that. Reagan flipped the script, right? It was really effective at that. I am not going to exploit for political purposes, my opponent's youth and inexperience. Now, does Biden have the nimbleness to pull one of those moves? No, and I don't think you can do it at 80. Honestly, like, I just don't think, I just don't think you can do it at 80.

But I think Jane's exactly right about the structural problems with our democracy. And I would add to that, though, the diminished number of young people. who are going into public service because our political culture is just vicious. It's specifically violent, among other things, but there's not a lot of dignity in American political life. Like if a person who sort of walks through life with a certain kind of reserve and a sort of integrity of your family life, look at who wants that? Well, Jill, you've been teaching young students year after year. Do you sense that fewer and fewer of your best students want to go into politics? Yeah, you never hear from young people who I hear for a lot of people who want to run campaigns, people who want to do behind the scenes consulting sorts of things.

Although I will say just recently, this was one of the kind of great, to me, surprising knock on effects of the George Floyd moment. I have a lot of young African American men, male students who want to run for office. But those guys, they all want Biden to step down. I mean, I just feel I do not talk to young people who are excited about Biden running for re-election. And it's not because they don't appreciate that he did the great good work of defeating Donald Trump or that he hasn't had, you know, really a fairly successful first term. But they feel kind of renounced. There's no political space for them. There's this giant generation missing. It's not. much them. Obviously, they're not running for office yet, but they don't see people in their 30s and 40s. That's the, that's the sort of, I think, analytically, that is actually the missing peace in American political life. I couldn't agree more. I was so shocked. I remember interviewing Obama on his way out, and obviously most of the conversation was this kind of mournful

subtext about the incoming president, Trump. But when I asked him, who was on the bench in the Democratic Party, he could barely think of any names. That's the President of the United States. The leader of the Democratic Party, he could barely think of any names. Oh, yeah, who's that guy who's the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, etc. It was incredible. And you think, Jill, that's because there's such a disincentive that's enforced by this gerontocracy.

Yeah, and by the nature of the political culture. But just this sort of the social media-driven kind of doxing, destroy your life world that we live in makes a lot of people want to work behind the scenes and whatever they do. Whether conventional wisdom is correct or not, I keep reading that if Kamala Harris had been put in place as vice president to be a successor figure, that has fizzled in large measure. so that conventional wisdom goes. If, assuming that Biden runs, will anybody challenge him from within the party? It's hard for me to imagine they won't. You've got so many ambitious people.

I don't know if it'll be somebody who's respected and really can get far, but it just seems like an open invitation for somebody. I think the dynamic that is interesting with Biden in age is that if it winds up that he is running against Trump again, I don't think age is going to be a big issue. Trump's really not that much younger than Biden is. Where it becomes a big issue is if it's DeSantis or somebody who's much younger, then I think it's going to really be baggage for the Democrats. You agree, Joe? I think if it's Trump versus Biden, age won't be an

issue between them, but age will be an issue for American voters who will be really, really, really frustrated. I mean, I just think of the young people that would teach every day. They will be furious. They will be furious. Can't these people step down and get out of the way? You hear that all the time, and I'm with them there. I'm just not persuaded that there's enthusiasm for Biden. So the polls certainly don't reflect it. Yeah, you take that. And then you imagine being 19 and voting for the first time. And you're looking at Trump versus Biden again. And I just think that's a kind of political despair that fuels the political apathy of a non-voting young person in a way the country can't afford. Jillipur, Jane Mayer, thank you so much.

Thank you. Great to be with you. Staff writers Jane Mayer and Jillipur. I'm David Remnick. That's our program for today. Thanks for listening. See you next time. The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker.

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