President Biden was born Nov. 20, 1942, making him seven and a half years my senior, and the voices calling for someone else to run for president in 2024 are rising. There's not an opinion site or page in the country that doesn't have something on how he is already our oldest president and that he would be in his eighties should he win a second term.
The smart money is on Mr. Biden continuing to claim that he will run for re-election until past the midterms this fall... when he will finally change his mind. That would be my preference.
Everybody likes Joe Biden personally, but they are not so sure about his performance in office. He promised to bring "normalcy" back to politics, but that clearly has not happened. Sure, it's better by far than the chaos his predecessor created every day.
But the pandemic hasn't really gone away, though we have basically decided that we are over it. Ukraine is being tortured by a rival nation we can't afford to go to war with (mostly because of the possibility of the end of civilization as we know it). Gas prices are slowly decreasing but inflation remains high, mostly due to a combination of pent up demand for goods and travel along with effects of the Russian invasion.
No one thinks the nation is on the right track, and no one honestly has any idea of how to get America and the world back on track. Most people don't know what the "right track" even would look like.
It's a confusing time, but one thing I am less and less confused about is aging. There comes a time when we all need to think hard about putting most of our government's decision making power in the hands of people over 70 (and often well over 80).
Our "gerontocracy" (government by the elderly) is mostly my age and older. I'm not sure the country has fully come to grips with what having so many older leaders means, but the occasion of turning 72 has gotten me thinking more deeply about it all.
Sitting at a bar near the Drake campus last Friday, I found myself, somehow, sharing the story of how much child care cost us back in the 1970s as we were starting our family, after returning to Iowa City. The university still had vestiges of a lab school sponsored by the College of Education in the old University High School.
By sheer luck and good timing, we got Lesley into the Early Childhood Education Center (ECEC), part of the College of Ed., on the last day for enrollment, sometime in 1974. There were numerous students working as well as Masters and PhD students in early childhood education to take care of the kids. There was even a full-time nurse on duty. The monthly cost was $75.
ECEC guaranteed that younger siblings would be admitted and both Sara and Phil became "students" at about age two months. The school eventually closed down -- the 1980s began the squeezing of university budgets -- and we soon had to find Phil more traditional arrangements, but by then we were on a bit stronger financial footing.
Kathleen and I often wonder what we would have done without ECEC. Parents today need not wonder.
To them it must sound like a mythical time, and those 30- or 40-something parents listening to my story must have considered the entire tale science fiction without exploding planets or space battles.
The danger is in thinking that experiences I had in my 20s and 30s (or 50s, for that matter) will be coming back at all, much less becoming common once again. ECEC is not coming back. Government is too stingy and costs have risen astronomically.
Should every state provide something like ECEC at an affordable price to all parents? Of course!
Will that happen? Not a chance.
We need leadership that is more closely tied to life NOW as opposed to decades ago. People my age have stuff to contribute and wisdom to share and money to spend.
We just don't have to be the nation's leaders.
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