System Overload

System Overload

          As I was growing up, the ages of 65, 75 and 85 (just to pick three random points) were thought to be oldish, old and very old.  We all know about increasing longevity statistics and sixty being the new forty, or whatever.  We also all probably know people in their late sixties that are showing signs of age as much as we know people that are vibrant and fresh at the age of eighty.  What we cannot ignore is the natural statistical debilitation that occurs either gradually over these years or hits out of nowhere during these years.  It’s a fact of life and we are all mortal and subject to decay. Despite my excellent medical numbers and history, my doctor gave me this speech when he was heading off into his sunset.  He said sure, this is good and that won’t likely get you and that other thing seems to have passed you by, but your joints are going to catch up with you.  Sure enough, I find myself walking slower and slower, favoring my joints for want of avoiding traumatizing them.  I have less pep in my step than I used to.

          While I’m fine with that for myself (I have been avoiding running for buses for decades), it makes me wonder about our slate of presidential candidates as well as our current Commander-in-Thief.  They are in 2020:

• Trump – R (Prez) – 74 – 78
• Sanders – D – 79 – 87
• Biden – D – 78 – 86
• Weld – R – 75 – 83
• Warren – D – 71 – 79

I will stop there, not because there is magic in the 70-year-old mark, but because the array that declines in age to Pete Buttagieg at 39-years-old are vast, unlikely and young enough not to be of statistical concern.  This aged group of five has the highest probability of including our next fearless leader by almost any measure.  I’m no statistician, but I would give that bet 99% odds.  Just for fun, I’ve added their end-of-term age assuming an eight-year run in office, making three of the five octogenarians and the other two almost-octogenarians.

This is not a new observation, but it is one that I find myself personalizing when I see things like the Iranian drone attack and the resultant retaliatory flip-flopping by Herr Commandant.  It’s easy enough to question the President’s mental capacity to understand all the variables and outcomes.  It’s easy enough to question whether he was gaming the actions to make himself look more politically presidential and beneficent.  But what I find myself concerned about is whether his age-related cerebral degeneration has caused a sufficient degree of unsteadiness and uncertainty to impact his overall decision-making ability.

The medical profession defines the elderly as those over age 65 (that means me, dammit).  Studies show that in addition to age-associated memory impairment, there are clear indicators of age-related cognitive decline.  The bulk of these impairments involve a slowing of processing and general inaccuracies of thought process versus younger people.  They measure this through a whole battery of tests including the name-face test, fire alarm test (psychological stress testing), two delayed recall tests (this is about retention), misplaced objects test, shopping list test, and digit symbol test (complex memory/cognition tests).  Formal education in one’s early years seems to be the biggest variable to this (for instance having been an academic versus say a sleazy developer).  The most distressing quote I ran across from one study said, “The data suggest that for older adults, an increase of task complexity sometimes caused a radical failure in determining the correct response, rather than a gradual reduction of efficiency.”

This should be alarming to all of us as we contemplate who we want with their finger on the button for us in some critical time of the future geopolitical uncertainty.  So, to start with, let’s ask about educational mitigation.  Trump and Sanders have the least with four years of college, both from good schools.  The other three have three extra years of rigor from Law Degree programs, with Bill Weld even having some post-graduate work at Oxford.  Ronald Regan ended his presidency at age 77 (he had only a four year college degree), an age younger than every other candidate on this abridged docket.  And who can forget the tales of forgetfulness and afternoon naps that culminated afterwards in a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease, from which he eventually died.

My point is this, in selecting our leaders, we need to be concerned about the balancing of the benefits of wisdom that comes with age and the degeneration that comes with age.  I can debate all day long that Trump shows neither wisdom not competence, age-related or not, but that is not my point.  In selecting our next President we should consider what debilities come with age and what sort of wisdom we need in that chair to defend us against a new age list of perils and enemies that do not necessarily lend themselves to all our prior accumulated wisdom.  The world is moving very fast and it’s accelerating.  Youthful vigor and adaptability may be the most valuable characteristics we need in leaders.  We know the value of this on the sports field, why can we not imagine it in the White House? Response speed, certainty and decisiveness along with broad technological awareness are critical skills that can no longer just be appended to the President, but must be internalized in our President’s make-up.  These are not characteristics that lend themselves to the elderly, which, by definition established by medical practitioners, includes every one of our top 2020 candidates.

I have been a fan of Pete Buttigieg (and also Elizabeth Warren and Beto O’Rourke at various times), but I find myself drifting back to Mayor Pete as I write this.  Perhaps we need more emphasis on not creating a situation destined to make for system overloads of the sort the Iran drone produced.