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A tangential "sigh" idea: are we ever going to see an American president younger than 70, or has the age of gerontocracy truly arrived? In a two-party system,
by inglor_cz 3y ago
A tangential "sigh" idea: are we ever going to see an American president younger than 70, or has the age of gerontocracy truly arrived?
In a two-party system, massive clout accrues to people who are in the game for the longest time. Offices, lobbyists, donors, name recognition. Prior to the advances of the modern medicine, natural aging would push back against this trend. But now we are seeing ever more old people in positions of power.
It is somewhat better in Europe (Sunak and Macron are relatively young, so is Zelensky), but America seems to be very susceptible to that - not just in politics, in business, too (the average age of Fortune 500 CEOs increased a lot since 2000).
- somenameforme 3y agoJohn Adams lived to 90, Sam Adams to 81, Ben Franklin to 84, John Jay to 83, Thomas Jefferson to 83, James Madison to 85. Some of their lives could definitely have been extended, but I think people generally misunderstand human longevity. The peaks of ages have not really changed much at all, and a reasonable chunk of people who made it past childhood/birth (where there were indeed extremely high mortality rates), would make it there. For instance Hippocrates, of the Hippocratic Oath, lived to beyond 90, back in 400BC. Something else has changed.