I know many 18 YO's who are far more mature than a certain ex president, and at least as mature as the current one. age is an extremely poor indicator of one's maturity, capability or the quality of their experience.
Because the majority of 35 and under don’t have the experience in life or law or professionalism to hold an elder statesman position? They can still be elected to the house of reps to earn that experience. Or hold state offices.
once again… that’s not what I’m saying. Stop putting words in my mouth. Stop running off tangents. I am saying that it’s possible to be too old in the same way that it’s possible to be too young… and that the individuals in question are not “young” at all, and acting like they’re young is a problem.
majority of all Americans don’t have the qualifications you list. Should we amend the constitution to only allow lawyers to run things? Or perhaps we should just create a political caste and call it good?
it’s not the amount of experience that matters. It’s the quality and relevance. When you’re sole requirement is quantity of experience, you wind up with old farts whose majority of experience predate the modern world. (More than 3/4’s of Biden’s life has been without modern social media. More than half without the WWW.)
there are other qualities that also matter- like having a new idea. Biden has been part of the government for longer than I’ve been alive. Our govnernment has stagnated with people like him and Feinstein and McConnel in control. In every organization, leadership reaches a plateau where it’s difficult to grow past. You need new leadership- new ideas to leave that plateau.
You see, people past their fifties still treat me like a child... even though I've maintained two steady careers- simultaneously, because fuck this economy- for nearly two decades now. I am a grown-ass adult, and you do not get to dismiss, patronize or indeed infantilize me just because I happen to have a different opinion than you. that's just being ageist.
This makes me think of Sen. Strom Thurmond, who when he was in his 80s it came out he had an affair when he was in his 40s, and he said it was no big deal, that it was just a "youthful indiscretion".
53 to 62 is by no means young. It may not be elderly, but it's past middle aged.
The "ideal age" for a political leader is a bag of worms that it's difficult to get into without immediately falling into several different types of ageism.
The world lived in by a 60 year old for most of their adult life was radically different from the modern world, and has many differences from the world as experienced by the majority of Americans.
That doesn't necessarily make them a worse leader, just like more experience in life doesn't necessarily make them better, but it definitely raises concerns about disconnection from modern issues.
I mean Paul Ryan is only 53 now and was elected to office when he was 29. He is pretty young. McCarthy is only 58. Eric Cantor is the oldest at 62.
Definitely young and around the age you want leaders to be.
I was talking about Paul Ryan, who has been out of office for years. 58 isn’t ancient either.
The entire comment string was about how these three were “greying” in the photo. Nobody mentioned policy or abilities to me. Don’t forget, Paul Ryan quit because he knew how the party was going to turn out. Seems like a good man to me.
Getting the name wrong was my mistake, but I'd hardly call it totally rephrasing your comment. Intent was to remove the extraneous portion in the middle.
No one said it's ancient, but it's definitely not "young". They're all close to retirement age.