The Young and the Restless

I admit a bias at the outset: In 20008, the US elected a President younger than I, and I now find myself older than many leaders in DC, older than many of the writers, columnists and scholars that I learn from. It’s hard to adjust to the fact that “old” Tim Duncan is only a few years older than my oldest son.

I don’t think this is the only reason I perked up when I saw Noemie Emery’s Weekly Standard piece, “The Young and Restless,” about the youthfulness of Senators-turned-Presidential candidates.

Emery finds commonalities between the young and restless Senators of the past half-century: Kennedy and Obama, now Cruz and Rubio: “All were religious and/or ethnic minorities, all were impatient and restless by nature, and none fits the mold of a Senate insider.” She notes the similarities between the attacks on Kennedy and those on Cruz and Rubio – missed Senate votes, the irritation they provoke in older, more experienced colleagues, their battles with mentors. Currently, GOP leaders are using the missteps of the Obama years to claim that Cruz and Rubio need more seasoning.

Emery doesn’t think youth is the problem: “If youth is the problem, it hasn’t been historically, as we have had presidents younger than Obama who did not leave chaos behind. Theodore Roosevelt, who was just 42 in 1901 when he succeeded the murdered William McKinley, became an iconic world leader. Kennedy, the youngest president ever elected, was 43, four years younger than Obama was when he took office, and he too became an iconic figure and left behind a booming economy and a stable world order (by today’s standards).” She argues that “the difference was not in their ages but in their temperaments, their political leanings, and the way they reacted to their errors when they committed them, and to the disappointments and failures that came their way.”

The other problem is the Senate, which is “a bad place from which to try running for President.” Emery argues that “those people who love the Senate the most, understand it the best, and are able to play it like a musical instrument . . . make the worst showings when running for President.” Presidential candidates need “big ideas and clear visions,” and the Senate doesn’t encourage these qualities among the older, more experienced members. The Senators most like to succeed in running for a higher office are the ones who have not yet become ensconsed: “the senators who run effective presidential campaigns tend to be those who don’t much like the Senate and wish to depart it as quickly as possible. . . . When it comes to senators seeking promotion, the young and restless prevail.” Only young Senators can realistically take the stance of reformers, as Cruz especially has done by making himself a nuisance from the moment he arrived in DC.

Perhaps I’ll have to swallow my ageism, but I do it grudgingly.