“The older I grow, the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom.”
H.L.Mencken

I can remember more than 30 years ago when Presidents and Vice Presidents were all, in my opinion, old men. Then the Vice President and Presidential candidate George H.W. Bush picked a youthful Dan Quayle for his Vice Presidential running mate and I suddenly felt a lot older. Quayle is a month younger than I am! Bush 41 was the last of eight consecutive Presidents with World War II experience and I am a baby-boomer being born after World War II.

Bush-Quayle was followed by Clinton-Gore (5 months older and 14 months younger). Then came President Bush 43 (6 months older) who was followed by President Obama (14 years younger). And now we have President Trump (7 months older) who was seventy when elected and Vice President Pence, now a youthful 59 years old.

Looking at this another way, four of these men (Bush ’43, Clinton, Trump, & Quayle) were born in an eight month period from June 1946 through February 1947 with Gore born only 13 months later. These four men, or five with Gore, are my contemporaries as I was born in January 1947. And, Obama and Pence are both a dozen (or more) years younger than I am.

Today, consider the almost twenty Presidential candidates in the Democratic Party with former Vice President Biden and Senator Sanders leading in the popularity polls. Biden, at 76, and Sanders, at 77, are both noticeably older; old enough that Biden would have been a senior in high school when Clinton, Trump, and Bush 43 were freshmen and Gore, Quayle, & I would have still been in 8th grade. And Sanders was two years ahead of Biden.

It seems I must be getting younger! If Biden or Sanders is on the Democratic ticket, just one of many good reasons to re-elect the President!