Age is Just a Number
There has been lots of conversation about certain politicians being too old to serve in high office. But let’s be honest, for the most part they don’t mean age by number…they mean competency.
There’s nothing magical about age, but we constantly place emphasis on it throughout our lives. The legal drinking age is now 21; I can remember when here in Iowa it was 21, then 18, then 19, then back to 21. There are no doubt some 19 year olds who could handle alcohol responsibly, and some 29 years olds who cannot. But we picked an arbitrary age because evaluating folks on a case-by-case basis is not feasible. The federal government picked 21 and passed legislation requiring states to have a 21 drinking age if they wanted federal transportation money…nothing to call that but extortion, but it’s apparently legal.
For decades, the voting age was 21, then in 1971, it was moved to 18 by Constitutional amendment. Was that a good idea? Most folks take voting seriously once they get some age on them and have to pay taxes, wind up owning property, etc. But we didn’t want any rules concerning that, so the age of adulthood was chosen to be 18.
Not for drinking alcohol, of course…but if you want consistency, laws passed by Congress is no place to find it.
The point is that we need to stop using age as a code word, particularly when we’re talking about politicians and their competency. Not making a political point, but Joe Biden is 81, while Donald Trump is 77…but when you see the two of them in front of crowds and in interviews, you’d say there’s more than four years difference in their ages—and again, that’s not because of a number, but because of the total package.
We need to be honest about these things, because the stakes are too high. Age is just a number…but competency, on a variety of levels, is much more.
