America is a country governed by the elderly, and it's starting to show
National Post, 22 August 2021
The United States has become a gerontocracy rivalling the late Brezhnev-era Soviet Union.
It has not been remarked that the three major party leaders in the current federal election — Justin Trudeau, Erin O’Toole and Jagmeet Singh — are all in their 40s (Trudeau is the oldest of them, and will turn 50 this coming Christmas Day).
It has not remarked because it is not remarkable. Pierre Trudeau, Joe Clark, Brian Mulroney, Kim Campbell and Stephen Harper all became prime minister in their 40s. Canada has a fairly good turnover of generations in its national leadership.
Not so the United States, which has slowly become a gerontocracy rivalling the late Brezhnev-era Soviet Union.
You may have seen news of the controversy over former president Barack Obama’s 60th birthday party earlier this month. Throwing the party for himself, he planned to invite 500 of his admirers to his 30-acre, $12-million estate on Martha’s Vineyard, the playground of America’s uber-wealthy.
Even Maureen Dowd, who spent the last four years fantasizing about the Obama era during her never-ending nightmare of Donald Trump’s presidency, found it rather too much, characterizing it as “an orgy of the one per cent — private jets, Martha’s Vineyard, limousine liberals and Hollywood whoring — complete with a meat-free menu.”
Alas, like many other families, the Obamas had to limit their gatherings during the pandemic. The 500-person bash was thought too much, so the guest list was trimmed to about 300 or so, and Obama even hired a “COVID director” to make sure the catering staff wore masks. Obama and his rich friends did not.
The real news was not that Obama threw himself a big party. He has long gone the the way of Harry and
Meghan, flogging himself as a Netflix personality and recording long conversations of himself with entertainment stars. He may have even got the idea for his Martha’s Vineyard fin-de-siècle Roman sybaritic celebration from Meghan Markle’s $500,000 star-studded baby shower in Manhattan. Alas, Oprah, who was originally on the guest list for Obama’s 60th, declined, as the pandemic turned the PR-angle negative.
Yet the real news was that America has a former president who is only 60. It was, if you keep track of such things, a banner summer for presidential birthday milestones. Three of them turned 75 — Bill Clinton (Aug. 19), George W. Bush (July 6) and Donald Trump (June 14). The only other living president, Jimmy Carter, is 96. He was born in 1924, the same year as the late George H.W. Bush.
The United States has had a president succeed another born in the same year. Rutherford B. Hayes succeeded Ulysses S. Grant in 1877, both of them born in 1822, and Gerald Ford succeeded Richard Nixon in 1974, both of them born in 1913.
But three presidents elected 24 years apart and all born in 1946 is something truly remarkable, all the more so when the incumbent is even older than those three. Joe Biden, born in 1942, is older than the baby boom, the first year of which included Clinton, Bush Jr. and Trump.
But even Biden may feel spritely when he consults the congressional leadership. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is 81. The Senate is liberally sprinkled with octogenarians.
Does it matter if the United States has been governed for 20 of the last 28 years by men born in the 1940s? Isn’t age just a number? Yes, but generations do matter.
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