The Age of McCain

Super Tuesday is over and it looks more and more like McCain will be the GOP nominee. Talk about comeback kid! Well, I wouldn't call him a kid. He himself said "I am older than dirt and have more scars than Frankenstein." He will be 72 on Inauguration Day (whoever is finally inaugurated).

This got me thinking about the age issue and brought to my mind a bit of wisdom from President Dwight Eisenhower (that "senile old bastard" as Vice-President Richard Nixon privately referred to his boss): "No one should ever sit in this office over 70 years old, and that I know."

Senile? Maybe not. But no doubt he was decrepit, dogged by poor health while in office, including a heart attack and a stroke. I think he makes an interesting point.

Then there was Reagan.

Reagan was 69 when he took the oath of office and 77, nearly 78, when he left. Reagan only validated Eisenhower's observation. Besides his various health problems while in office, Reagan, we now know, was mostly carried during his second term by wife Nancy, together with various of his aides. Press secretary Larry Speakes described the process of preparing him for press conferences as "like reinventing the wheel." Therefore, he was mostly kept from the press.

But one of the most chilling accounts I've come across was in journalist Leslie Stahl's memoirs Reporting Live. She described a meeting she, her husband, and eight year old daughter had with Reagan on the occasion of her stepping down as CBS News' White House Correspondent in 1986:

Reagan was shriveled as a kumquat. He was so frail, his skin so paper-thin. I could almost see the sunlight through the back of his withered neck. His bony hands were dotted with age spots, one bleeding into another. His eyes were coated. Larry [Speakes] introduced us, but he had to shout. Had Reagan turned off his hearing aid?

"Mr. President!" he bellowed. "This is Lesly Stahl." He said it slowly. "Of CBS, and her husband, Aaron Latham."

Reagan didn't seem to know who I was. He gave me a distant look with those milky eyes and shook my hand weakly. Oh, my, he's gonzo, I thought. I have to go out on the lawn tonight and tell my countrymen that the president of the United States is a doddering space cadet. My heart began to hammer with the import. As the White House photographer snapped pictures of us -- because this was a photo op -- I was aware of the delicacy with which I would have to write my script. But I was quite sure of my diagnosis.

Larry was shouting again, instructing the president to hand us some souvenirs. Cuff links, a White House tie tack. I felt the necessity to fill the silence. "This is my daughter, Mr. President," I said. "Taylor. She's eight." He barely responded but for a little head tilt.

Click. Click. More pictures. A flash. "When I covered Jimmy Carter," I said, "Taylor used to tell everyone that the president worked for her mommy. But from the day you moved in here, she began saying, 'My mommy works for the president.'" I wasn't above a little massaging, Was he so out of it that he couldn't appreciate a sweet story that reflected well on him? Guess so. His pupils didn't even dilate. Nothing. No reaction.

Luckily she didn't have to report on Reagan's condition. She went on to relate that when she told the president that her husband was a Hollywood screenwriter, he suddenly snapped out of it and began to take part in his favorite pastime: talking about the movies.

Looking way back, "Old Tippecanoe" William Henry Harrison was 68 years of age when he took office. Harrison came suffering with a probable case of ulcers which left him able to subsist on little other than milk and cheese. We all know the history. On a cold, cloudy, damp, blustery inauguration day, Harrison stood without his great coat and gave a long-winded (accounts say two hour) speech. He caught literally his death of a cold and died from pneumonia three weeks later, becoming the first president to die in office.

President James Buchanan was 65 when he took office. He served but one term. I suppose everything went more or less okay health-wise for him. However, under his administration the nation began to get very ill as states began to seceded from the Union over the slavery issue. His words to Abraham Lincoln on the day he left office: "If you are as happy in entering the White House as I shall feel on returning to Wheatland you are a happy man."

Zachary Taylor is another senior citizen president with whom age might have been a cause for concern. His nickname was "Old Rough and Ready." He was 64 years old when he took office and served a little more than a year when he met his demise under unusual circumstances.

He took ill after spending an afternoon in the heat of Independence Day ceremonies held at the Washington Monument. Afterwards he took a leisurely walk along the Potomac River and returned to the White House. There he dined on raw fruits and cold drinks. That night an abdominal malady took hold of him and steadily worsened by the day until his death on July 9.

In our day an autopsy was performed on Taylor's remains in order to put to rest suspicions that he may have been poisoned by enemies. Said autopsy did that. The likely explanation is that an old gentlemen contracted a bacterial infection, probably from contaminated water, and was simply not healthy enough to fight it off on his own or with the help of the primitive medical knowledge of his day.

Harry S. Truman was just short of his 61st birthday when he became president upon FDR's death. Roosevelt died at the beginning of his fourth term and Truman finished that one, was reelected, and served another term. Known for his brisk early morning walks, Truman gave 'em Hell the entire time he was president. And the public seemed to have given him Hell, bestowing on him a job approval rating of 22% near the end of his term.

George H. W. Bush was 64 when he took office and served a single term. With no significant health problems while serving, he seems to have remained fairly healthy to this day with sky-diving and charity work. He has been an avid defender of his son, the current President Bush (who seems to be much the mental inferior of his elderly father).

Mention should also be made of John Adams, who was 61 when he assumed office and served only one term. He lived on until the age of 90, setting a record for oldest former president which held until Reagan surpassed it. Also, Gerald Ford was 61 when he "stumbled" into the presidency upon Nixon's resignation. Denied a term of his own right, he surpassed Reagan's record and lived on until the age of 93 years, 165 days.

What should we make of Eisenhower's observation?

Daily Dumbth Quote:

"The American people are united on almost every important issue facing the country." --Newt Gingrich (quote from his recent book "Real Change: From the World That Fails to the World That Works")