For aging leaders: How long is too long?

Watching the presidential candidates’ debates, and now, his post-election appearances, I see how old Joe Biden looks. He has that slightly transparent and tremulous look that goes with old age. Donald Trump, another septuagenarian, appears more robust, if less coherent, than his elected successor. But why is either of them still working?

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s recent death highlights the same question. Would she not have served her own values better if she had retired under the first Obama administration? She could then have been fairly sure of securing an ideological comrade in her place. She hung on, and on, aging and ill. This toughness is admirable, but, for someone with national responsibilities, misguided. Still employed at 87!

When, in fact, is it time to go, time to retire? I’m now thinking: sooner, rather than later. At 64, I’m entering the “could retire” zone, when Medicare renders stopping work viable. I say to myself: “Not yet: I’m still productive.” But will my colleagues soon start to say, “When is she leaving?” I hope they won’t. But knowing when it’s time to quit is useful knowledge, for Supreme Court Justices, presidential candidates, and everyone else.

History has its share of people who should have left the building earlier than they did. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill notoriously lingered, tempting and teasing his protégé Anthony Eden with promises to “hand over” in just a little while. We now know that Churchill suffered a serious stroke while prime minister in the early fifties, which was covered up. Poor Anthony Eden took over from the 80-year-old Churchill just in time for the disaster of the 1956 Suez Canal Crisis and for his own precarious health to completely collapse. Decades younger than Churchill, Eden resigned after less than two years in a position long aspired to.

Aging dictators exist in their own retirement-resisting category. Often, autocrats cannot leave because others will discover where the bodies (sometimes real ones) are buried. Sometimes the “strong men” are pushed. A coup toppled 90-year-old Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe. Libya’s Moammar Gadhafi hung on until the Civil War got him at age 69. Will Russia’s Vladimir Putin ever volunteer for his old-age pension? It’s difficult to imagine.

Reigning monarchs have another – usually non – retirement plan, at least in the United Kingdom. Queen Elizabeth II is 94. She’s not retiring. Nobody expects her to. In the Brits’ view, only the flaky Scandinavian royals get off the throne before the grim reaper’s invitation. Monarchs anointed by God go on to the end.

But for mere mortals, there’s another consideration: it’s give the younger people a chance. Many older workers know they have greener colleagues who will in some way benefit from the gray-beard’s departure. “Get out of my way, Boomer!” may be a barely-repressed comment in many workplaces. And, in fragile economies, the higher salaries of long-stayers stand out.

Some people, however, just cannot afford to stop earning. Well into their 60s and 70s, they may have families to support or not enough beyond social security benefits to tempt them. The pandemic has rattled a lot of older workers’ plans. Younger people may have lost income, leaving older relatives to pick up the slack.

Debts, mortgages, struggling adult “children,” and grandchildren: these keep us working. I too feel the need to scoop up the cash while I can. Who knows what’s ahead, for me, or for my family?

Well, back to our soon- to- be-president Joe Biden. I have to say that I worry about him – his physical stamina, his clarity of thought – in short, his age. Yes, Kamala Harris looks young and vigorous. But why, oh why did the United States of America finish the election season with two septuagenarians as its finalists?

Is it that Americans find it just too difficult to confront the frailties of old age? Perhaps braver attitudes might have produced a different outcome in the Democratic primaries?

Predictably, I have to end with lines from Dylan Thomas’s poem to his old Dad: “Do not go gentle into that goodnight. / Rage, rage against the dying of the light.” This heroic protest against the end of life is a moral and emotional tonic for any human. But it’s a tonic that needs to be tasted sparingly, particularly by those in high places.