On movie screens this Christmas, you can see the latest iteration of the Mary Queen of Scots tale, starring Saoirse Ronan and Margot Robbie as Mary and Elizabeth I. I like both actresses, but this tale has been done to death with stars like Vanessa Redgrave and Katherine Hepburn as Mary and Glenda Jackson and Cate Blanchett as Elizabeth.
Mary has never seemed worth the trouble since she was a naive, nitwit with terrible taste in men and an insufficient appreciation of how dangerous it might be to mess with the red-haired daughter of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn.
But the immediate thought I had in this case was that both stars were too young for the parts. This is the sort of error people my age fall prey to. Everyone under 50 begins to look like a callow youth. We think a rock star looks like the embalmed Keith Richards. Absurd, of course. A glance in the mirror would suggest it is time for our crowd to yield the stage to a younger generation.
In fact, Ronan is 24 and Robbie is 28. Mary commenced her ill-advised plot against Elizabeth in her early twenties, was put under lock and key at 25, and kept there until, at 45, she was beheaded for trying to pull off a regicide. Elizabeth was a decade older, so was about 35 when she put Mary where she could do no harm.
These rulers and the women playing them may seem absurdly young, but people didn’t live so long before our era. Many movers and shakers made haste to make history. Alexander the Great conquered much of the world before dying at 33. Augustus Caesar was emperor by 36. Napoleon was a general at 24, crowned himself emperor by 35, and was exiled by 49.
Scientists often do their breakthrough work at an early age. Einstein published his first paper on relativity at 26, Watson and Crick cracked the code of DNA at 25 and 37, Newton concocted calculus at 24. Artists who were immortal, and gone at an early age, include Keats dead at 25, Shelley, 29, Mozart 35, Van Gogh 36, Byron 36, Chopin 39.
In America, a Revolution was made by youngish men. Washington was entrusted with the Continental Army at 43 and became our first president at 56. Jefferson drafted the Declaration at 34 and Madison became the Father of the Constitution at 36. Patrick Henry said “Give Me Liberty” at 40 and Paul Revere rode into history at 41.
In the first 157 years of the country, of 32 presidents from Washington to FDR, only five were in their 60s when they took office. In the sixty-one years since then, another five have been in their 60s and one, Trump, became the first over 70 when elected.
Members of the Senate often serve until they drop, but even that geriatric institution is looking a bit too superannuated at present. The Supreme Court, of course, is a lifetime appointment and so has often had members on the bench who had already stayed too long at the dance decades before they actually departed.
Is government by the elderly a good idea? My Aunt Viola didn’t think so. She was a lifelong Republican who surprised me in 1996 when Bob Dole ran for President at the age of 73. She pronounced him too old for the job. She was then 90, and perhaps knew whereof she spoke.
We probably don’t want a teen president, and the framers decided anyone under 35 was too young for the job. A little maturity is not amiss, and and only nine presidents were in their 40s when entrusted with the office — a mixed bag consisting of Polk, Pierce, Grant, Garfield, Cleveland, Teddy Roosevelt, Kennedy, Clinton and Obama.
However, in a rapidly changing world — demographically, scientifically, technologically, geopolitically — being current and adaptable rather than frozen in the amber of an earlier era may be crucial. One need only recall the cluelessness of Senators pushing 90, like Chuck Grassley and Orrin Hatch, when confronted with the need to understand, oversee, and legislate concerning the threats posed by Russian hackers and villainy from the likes of Facebook and Twitter. Embarrassing.
I thought of my aunt’s warning in 2016 when my choices were the the 69-year-old Hillary Clinton and the 71-year-old Trump. Too old. And now 2020 looms. Trump would be 79 at the end of a second term. Many possible challengers are far from spring chickens themselves.
When the next winner is sworn in, January 2021, Bernie Sanders would be 80, Joe Biden and Michael Bloomberg 79, Kerry Redux 77, Hillary Redux 74, Elizabeth Warren 72, Eric Holder 70, and John Hickenlooper and Sherrod Brown 69. If any of them were elected, they would join Trump and Reagan as the three oldest presidents in history.
The youngsters begin with Terry McAulliffe 64, Amy Klobuchar 61, Kamala Harris 57, Kirsten Gillibrand 55, Cory Booker 52, and the comparatively juvenile Beto O’Rourke 49 and Julian Castro 48.
After Trump’s angry, get-off-my-lawn, old man persona, age may not play well, particularly with Millennials who have displaced Boomers as the largest demographic cohort. Conversely, Trump’s obvious lack of inexperience in the dark arts of governing and legislating may make a seasoned candidate with experience, competence, and manners attractive.
Time will tell, if the impulsive reign of Trump permits any of us to live that long.