LAST WEEK I appeared on a panel of distinguished media types at Boston University to talk about the presidential campaign. A flier promoting the event asked, "How do sexism, racism, religion, and ageism factor in the electing of a candidate?" At first I scoffed at the PC boilerplate - what's missing? Vegetarianism? - but then I realized that "ageism" referred to the Republican candidate, John McCain. It is a testament to the ubiquity and subtlety of age discrimination that its role in this presidential campaign wasn't obvious even to an old (that is, longtime) political junkie like me.
Indeed, ageism may be society's last acceptable prejudice. A survey last year by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press found 48 percent of respondents were less willing to vote for someone over age 70 as president. McCain is 71. Only atheists did worse in the survey, which found broad acceptance for electing a woman (where only 11 percent would admit they were less likely to vote for a female candidate), a black (4 percent), a Mormon (30 percent), and even that bipartisan political pariah, a longtime Washington politician (15 percent).
The point is not that there is 10 times as much ageism as racism in America today; the point is that it isn't considered impolite to admit it.
The 2008 campaign is providing an acid test of American attitudes because of the pioneer status of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. But McCain also is aiming to break a ceiling: he would be the first person over 70 ever elected president. Somehow, this doesn't have the same romance as being the first woman or black president.
Age doesn't play the same as race or gender in the country's identity politics. Senior citizens aren't turning out in massive rallies to thank McCain for representing their interests and aspirations. McCain's age isn't a steady undercurrent to his speeches or policy positions. And yet age may be the real determinant, as the sociologists say, for how a person operates in the world.
A few years ago I attended a diversity seminar at Dartmouth College's Tuck School of Business. Our instructor asked us which demographic characteristic we believed most determines a person's outlook and experience. Most of us answered race, others said gender, or maybe class. But no, we were told; it is age that most defines both a person's own sense of identity and the way others view them.
It was a mind-bender at the time, but it makes a kind of native sense: The generation gap may have been bridged over the war or pop music, but it yawns anew over facility with new technologies - a social divide the impact of which isn't even clear yet.
The culture's acceptance of elder-baiting is easy to see in the late-night zeitgeist of David Letterman's show. Letterman, himself 62, recently unspooled a litany of one-liners about McCain, all of them poking fun at his age. "John McCain is the kind of guy who picks up his TV remote when the phone rings. He's the kind of guy who parks his RV overnight at the
Hardy har-har.
McCain himself recognizes the vulnerability. To reassure voters of his longevity he frequently invokes his 96-year-old mother and reminds reporters that he hiked the Grand Canyon "rim to rim" with his son in 2006. We may not see McCain splitting wood the way Ronald Reagan did to demonstrate his virility, (Reagan was only 69 when elected) but he has reached for youth cred by appearing on Jon Stewart's "The Daily Show" more than 10 times.
Yet McCain's age raises legitimate issues. The actuarial tables are looking better for 71-year-olds, but McCain is an individual, not a statistic; he has led a punishing life and survived three bouts of melanoma. McCain needs to choose his running mate with care, and he needs to release a complete updated set of medical records since his 2000 presidential race.
The panel at BU was nicely balanced: three white men, three women, and two African-Americans. The only representative of McCain's age cohort, though, was the wonderful Ida Lewis, the first editor in chief of Essence magazine, the groundbreaking publication for successful black women. In fact, Lewis was a three-fer: an older black woman. Still, she had no doubts about her political identity. "I never thought I'd live to see this day," she said.
She was with Obama, 100 percent.
Renée Loth is editorial page editor of the Globe.
