Since When Does Inexperience Count If You’re Running For President?

In one of the most famous moments in the history of Presidential debates, President Ronald Reagan, running for re-election in 1984 against Senator Walter Mondale, quipped, “I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent’s youth and inexperience.”

It’s possible that Reagan sealed the deal for the 1984 election with those words, just as he had done so in 1980, when he famously told Jimmy Carter, with exasperation, mock or otherwise, “There you go again.”

There’s usually something to be said for older people and their experience and institutional memory.

This time around, though, commentators are bemoaning the fact that the three Democratic frontrunners are in their 70s.

Excuse me, but since when have youth and inexperience become virtues for candidates seeking the White House?

It was shocking when John F. Kennedy won the presidency at age 43, because he looked like he might have been the son, or even the grandson, of his predecessor, Dwight Eisenhower.

Kennedy, however, had some pretty hard miles on him. He was a legitimate, decorated war hero, from his days in combat in World War II. He also had extensive Senate experience, however.

When you’re the President of the United States, you’re also leader of the Free World. You will be tested by rivals and opponents who will have been involved in politics, power struggles, military affairs, and even espionage since before you were born.

The Chinese, the Russians, the Iranians, and pretty much every opponent the United States faces agree on one thing: you don’t put a booster seat on the chair of the nation’s leader.

Chairman Xi trudged for decades on his way to the top of the Communist party and Chinese government ranks.

Vladimir Putin spent decades in the KGB before he took his first political position, advisor to the mayor of Saint Petersburg, serving for years in the Russian government before his ascension to the pinnacle of power.

I have no idea how old the Mullahs of Iran might be. If they went to my Safeway, though, they wouldn’t be carded if they tried to buy a case of Coors.

Only we silly Americans are naïve enough to think that an unlined face somehow makes up for a half-century of adult life and public service.

The most prominent countries run today by young whippersnappers are Saudi Arabia and Canada.

Nobody’s going to make a case that MBS is a great leader, unless destroying Yemen and kidnapping and murdering your rivals are hallmarks of statesmanship.

And Justin Trudeau is rapidly giving the lie to the idea that all you need to be a successful Prime Minister is low body fat.

It’s not just politicians who recognize that age matters. Rabbi Noach Orlowek, a Jerusalem educator, puts it best: “Gray hair means ‘information center.’”

But my favorite response comes from Neil Simon, in his play Broadway Bound.

The central character, Eugene, has a powerful confrontation with his father, Jerome, a maker of ladies’ raincoats, in Act II.

“I’m a middle-aged man and I don’t know a damn thing,” Jerome says sadly. “Wisdom doesn’t come with age. Wisdom comes with wisdom.”

But by the same token, we shouldn’t turn over the keys to the leadership of the free world if the recipient just got his driver’s license or recently learned to shave.

Here’s to the old-timers. We must know something.