OPINION: Zornio: Ageism Goes Both Ways. Let’s Look at the Facts.
Young people in politics experience as much or more ageism than older people. Why are we mostly focused on the latter?
Trish Zornio 3:05 AM MST on Feb 26, 2024
President Joe Biden is 81 years old. Donald Trump is 77. Are these men too old to hold office?
According to the majority of Americans, yes. Yet some, including my colleague, call this question ageist. Is it?
Let’s consider this question another way: Is Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez too young to be president? Because according to current U.S. election law, she is. In fact, she’s the only one of the three politicians mentioned above that is legally barred from running for president based solely on her age; not for being too old, for being too young.
So why isn’t that ageist, too?
I was reminded of this age limit discrepancy upon reading my colleague’s column, and her argument that aging is unique to an individual. She’s right, to a large extent it is. Yet nowhere in her column did she note that ageism goes both ways, a surprising omission given the extent of ageism young people get.
For me, this is the most frustrating part of age discrimination in politics: it’s logically inconsistent. There are zero age maximums, but multiple age minimums for political candidates. If you want to run for the House of Representatives, you’ve got to be at least 25. For U.S. Senate, it’s 30. President is 35. But why? Where do these particular age limits even come from? And if we have so many age minimums, and few seem to bat an eye at those, why are age maximums out of the question?
Personally I find age minimums to be arbitrary and outdated. There’s no science that suggests a current U.S. House Rep at age 34 is somehow less experienced in politics than Trump was when he ran for president in 2016. And there’s definitely no science that suggests a 35-year-old is somehow that much wiser than a 34-year-old. It nonsensical.
It’d be another matter if we were talking about age minimums for kids. There are tangible differences in biology that could impact their abilities to, say, run for president. But we’re not. We’re talking about age minimums for fully grown adults — adults who are otherwise permitted to be drafted to the military, drink alcohol, buy guns and do almost any other dangerous thing they want — except to hold the office that decides on whether or not they can do those things.
Even if one were to argue that changes occur in the brain throughout the lifespan, or that life experiences matter, both of which are true, the whole point made by my colleague for ageism against older people is that we should not let age-related averages define an individual.
So why should we let them define younger people? Case in point, I don’t care how many years Trump lives, there are 20-year-olds I know who could do a better job at running the country than he ever could. Age clearly isn’t everything.
So, yes, Biden and Trump are old. And yes, many older people can have changes in their cognitive or physical abilities. But not all do, just as not all younger people are incapable or inexperienced. This means that if we are not to judge elder candidates by their age, then we must also remove age minimums, too. You can’t have it both ways.
Yet here’s where things get a little bit complicated. By focusing on the individual, we have to be able to ask if that individual possesses a clear state of mind and physical capacity for the job at hand without it being considered ageist. Holding office is too important not to.
This is where I, like most Americans, still think Biden and Trump are too old to be president. Not because I’m conjuring up some stereotypical images of seniors wearing dentures and adult diapers as my colleague alludes, but because we must face the reality that aging is real and both candidates have displayed worrying age-related symptoms worthy of discussion for the highest office in the land.
This isn’t a job bagging groceries. This is a job requiring immense physical and mental stamina that most people of any age aren’t capable of doing, not to mention it comes with the nuclear codes.
Taking the issue of age one step further, my trepidation about Biden and Trump extends to generational issues in that theirs absolutely refuses to make room for mine. It’s downright infuriating, and it’s not good for our nation to have such generation-skewed representation.
This is part of why we have a national retirement age in the first place; to make room for the next generations who still need to build wealth. As I see it, the role of president should be no exception.
So can you ask how old a candidate is without being ageist? Maybe, if you don’t intend to use it as the reason not to vote for them. But remember, sticking to substance over age goes for the young and the old.
Fair is fair.