this post was submitted on 19 Mar 2024
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What is recent? W. Bush was four presidents ago, Clinton was only five presidents ago. We're only on our 46th president since Washington was inaugurated in 1789, 235 years ago. When you go through presidents that slowly, it's easy to have your sample thrown off if you just include a couple of decades.
Yeah I felt like including anyone older than the 1900's was cheating considering people back then died in their 60's from having bad teeth back then, let alone bloodletting.
recent as in, 10-20 years. Bush technically counts. Maybe. I didn't do the math.
Either way my point here was that it's absurd that our candidacy choices are between two elderly men.
Just to explain my math point a bit more, let's take the definition of recent by decade, where all presidents serving within those decades count:
Even going back fairly far, we still have a pretty small sample size to draw conclusions for presidents specifically.
I agree with you on the age issue as a broader problem. There we have a solid sample. We've become a gerontocracy at the federal level especially, with the older generations holding onto power far past when they should have moved aside to allow in new people and fresh ideas. People in their 80's and 90's holding on to seats clogs the pipelines so that everyone else is prevented from moving up.
every so often i remember that there are still probably silent generation members in the government, and that statistically, the vast majority is gen x or older, broadly across the government.
It really makes you think.