Somehow the presidency does not seem a place for old men, and that attitude has remodeled a lot of how I feel lately. Celebrities should not use fame to push pet causes and enlist their mostly young fans, but who else will the young consider? We face an upcoming presidential election between, to many minds, simply one old guy and another old guy, each of whom has had the job and each of whom comes with his share of political baggage. Joe Biden, elected to office, regularly and successfully since 1973, when Richard Nixon was president and the Bee Gees were topping the charts. Donald Trump, well, you know.
On Oct. 7 of this year, Hamas, the political and military leadership in Gaza, came over the border with Israel and initiated a daylong slaughter of civilians, prompting retribution from Israel, and that’s why a delicate balance of bombings, advance warning of bombings, diplomacy, humanitarian pauses in the action, prisoner swaps, war by bulldozer and informal and uncorroborated news reports via social media hold our attention. Biden handled it the way someone in his 80s could be expected to; within hours of the initial attack in Israel, he announced his total support of Israel, flew to Israel to make that clear and later announced all U.S. help and aid would be extended to Israel.
You will note that any of the world’s pro-Gaza sentiment is offered by young people, particularly on college campuses. Those rallies in London, Paris and elsewhere? Pretty much all younger people who may decry the violence but nonetheless feel that Palestinians have historically received a raw deal.
President Biden, it was noted by Michael Che of “Saturday Night Live” last week, age 80 – Biden turned 81 this week – is six years older than the State of Israel. He grew up as evidence of the Holocaust came to public attention and the formation of Israel as a country. Even as a member of Congress, he regarded Israel as the underdog in the Middle East, the country to root for and defend. I am not qualified to psychoanalyze him or his motives – although plenty of people have done that to Trump and Nixon – but at age 73, I can assure you that there is a difference between worldviews of twentysomethings and people like me.
Hell, I’m rooting for Israel too, although I wonder why wealthier Middle Eastern governments tend to join the world in regarding the Palestinian cause as an afterthought unworthy of money, diplomacy or more money. The current crisis will take years to unravel – expect a “long war,” as Israeli President Netanyahu, age 74, said before the first Israel tanks rolled into Gaza – and there will eventually be war crimes tribunals and the matter or rebuilding Gaza, with or without tunnels.
Younger people do not live with the curse of nostalgia or hindsight. They accept climate change or capitalism or the decline of newspapers not as something to deal with but to accept, in part because they have fewer memories of the way things used to be. While we old-timers care little about life in, say, 1915, what we learned in the Fifties, Sixties and beyond remain in our minds, whether or not they are relevant today. A younger person may not care that his or her newest Nikes or Adidas are made in Vietnam; someone older may see that label and momentarily shudder.
This world has longstanding problems, and fresh ones. The disconnect between old problem solvers and new ones is seen regularly; watch a C-SPAN telecast of Congressmen batting around net neutrality or artificial intelligence, then tell me if anything on “Saturday Night Live” is funnier.
Should the elderly be denied opportunities for public office? Only when you put an age limit on voting, but leadership in pursuit of old ideas offers little advantage. There are members of Congress in their Thirties, but their election to those offices is seen, literally, as breakthroughs; they broke through a thicket of older and more established candidates.
The war in Ukraine is straight out of the World War II playbook. The war in Gaza began with an attack straight out of medieval times. I suspect that Hamas is run by old men as well.