Where do our young leaders fit in the age debate?

It’s a common refrain your well-meaning, often younger friend or coworker might tell you to dampen your fears of getting older: “Age is just a number.”

Of course, to our inner cynics, these are just pretty words. But it’s true, isn’t it? Judging oneself based purely on one’s time spent on earth can lead to false conclusions. And if we struggle to extend this generous thinking to ourselves, imagine how hard it’s been for voters to extend it to this year’s presidential candidates.

Fate is pointing toward a rematch between President Biden and former president Donald Trump, the two oldest nominees in history — as they were when they faced off four years ago. Their age has given voters plenty to talk about.

In fact, age — and its toll on the physical and mental fitness of the candidates — has become a leading issue in the campaign.

Trump would be 82 at the end of a second term. Biden, who is already the oldest president in history, would be 86. If current polls are correct, most Americans are less than thrilled about another four years of a geriatric presidency.

The endless media clips of incoherent garble, memory slips and puzzling public performances by both candidates have done little to quell fears. Instead, they’ve served as endless fodder for speculation and rumor, with words like “dementia,” “senile” and “incompetent” dripping from commentators’ lips.

Much of the panic is over-hyped, medical experts say. Forgetting things and stumbling over words are not, by themselves, telltale symptoms of cognitive decline, they explain — rather, symptoms of just being human.

They remind us that no president under 24-hour media scrutiny has been spared cringe-worthy moments. Who can forget the gaffes of President George W. Bush, a spring chicken compared with Biden and Trump?

Nonetheless, I think Americans do have a right to be worried.

The fact that we must consider the possibility that either man could die in office of natural causes should give us pause. Doctors tell us that both are exceptionally healthy for their age, but they’re in a cohort all their own. They are “super seniors,” pushing the limits of an average lifespan while competing for the hardest job in the world.

It’s one thing not to judge people by their age, but quite another to ask the American public to ignore the effects of aging on these two people.
Age is a factor for the average senior managing the strains and pressures of a normal life, to say nothing of one who’s dealing with the unthinkable pressures of leading the free world. Can either Trump or Biden do it? Sure they can. But if the past few months are any indication of the next four years, it won’t be pretty.

The problem is bigger than just Trump and Biden — it’s a sign of deeper trouble with our politics. We complain about our leaders being too old, but we’ve paid too little attention to the other side of that coin: Where are our young leaders?

Socially and technologically, America today is not the America in which Biden and Trump came of age. Yet those in their 40s and younger are still passed up and overlooked for positions of power. The median age of a member of the U.S. House of Representatives is 58, according to Pew Research. For a senator, it’s 65.

Is it any wonder that young people feel they have been shut out of a place at the decision-making table, and that their concerns don’t rank high among their representatives’ priorities?

Young people’s alienation from and skepticism about politics have created a vacuum of engagement that older politicians have exploited in their own interests, as evidenced by the culture war focusing on gender in universities and school board meetings — and by extension against young people, who are by and large more open than past generations to redefining such concepts.

Those generational differences are also evident in the sluggish pace with which the government has mobilized technology and legislation to combat climate change, despite the urgent cries of young people demanding change now.

And those differences are brutally obvious in the lack of progress toward rethinking the cost of education and housing, for which young people stand most to lose.

Our present discontent toward our aging leaders is neither inevitable nor forever. It’s something we’ve chosen by refusing to let our young people take the lead and have a say in their future.

Juan Lasso is editor of the Valley Stream Herald, Comments? jlasso@liherald.com