I loved it when Elon Musk, the ridiculously wealthy crazy cakes Owner of Everything, recently told former President Donald Trump on Twitter that it was time he “rode off into the sunset”. Musk pointed out the obvious. If Trump runs in ’24 and wins the presidential election he will be 82 when that term ends.

He will be old.

Now let me be clear I’m no fan of Trump. You can look him up under ‘ ‘bloviating blowhard’ in the dictionary. You could also find him under ‘narcissist’,or ‘dangerous’ and any number of sub headings, none of which would matter a tinkers damn other than the fact he wants to be US president again. But this is not about Donald Trump, any more than it is about Joe Biden, the current president, or Nancy Pelosi, the eighty-two year old speaker of the House, or eighty-eight year old Senator Diane Feinstein. They are not joined by politics, fact is in the US politics of 2022 they couldn’t be further apart. These people and many more just like them are joined by one fact: They are old, each and every one of them is old. Too old in my opinion to be able to run government.

Now I know the knives are sharpening on this one. Republicans and Democrats will huck spears at me, thrust in my direction with ideological zeal. Let me be clear. I’m Canadian and if I did live in the US I would be a democrat. I like Joe Biden and I would support the Dems policy initiatives, probably even join a protest from time to time. Yep, I’m a classic socialist, what Republicans like to call Communists, what we like to call Liberals up here in Canada. So I am not pleased to add Joe Biden to my list of people who are too old to be president. Now Joe, bless his down to earth Scranton, PA roots has always been good for a gaffe throughout his fifty years of political life. That amused me when Joe and I were both in our 30’s, even through my 40’s and 50’s. It wandered into the ‘Land of Hmmm?’ when it continued in his 60’s but was still amusing in a kind of ‘Oh, that’s just Joe’ sort of way. But not anymore, it’s not. Joe is the single most powerful man in the world and it seems clear to me that he is in a significant intellectual, cognitive and physical decline. Of course he is. Joe is 78. He is old. Too old to be the president of the US. Listen he fell off his bike recently, he read an instructional line “repeat the line” as part of a speech he was reading from a teleprompter. Those examples from just the last few days! Old Joe is losing it. And before you Republicans go all “Joe must go!” on me, your own party hid Ronald Reagan’s Alzheimers from public view while he was president. None of you, Democrat or Republican can be trusted to tell the truth when political power is in play. So here’s what I think.

I think there should be a rule. No one over seventy can run for political office and there should be term limits requiring retirement if an elected politician turns seventy while still in office.

I know I’m going to be dragged into the public square and pelted with tomatoes for this ageist, sexist opinion. Perhaps it is, although I’m not sure that alone makes it wrong. We legislatively control children until the age of majority, for example, through a long mandatory process we impose on them to acquire a drivers licence. And why do we do that? We decided long ago that teenagers are neither intellectually nor physically ready to drive at an earlier age: They are not safe. And they’re not, they are too young. So if that works at the front end of our lives what is so wrong about imposing limits at the other end. You know, the end where it all starts to go wrong. Knees, backs, memories just to name a few. Of course there’s a major difference. Children don’t vote and enjoy no political influence at all. Seventy year olds on the other hand number in the tens of millions and they all have the vote. Find me the politician who will take that group on. Ain’t gonna happen, so notwithstanding the obvious, on we will go.

My friends at the Departure Bay Dog Park in Nanaimo are all well past seventy. They have lived full lives, their lined faces tracing the road map they have travelled. They are full of good humour and prefer a laugh over being angry at something and they have what most people over seventy have. They have an acquired wisdom that can only be learned the hard way. They are great. I have named them to my ‘Council of The Wise’, a title which few seek and even fewer recognize. So I asked my wise friends Maurice, Ron and Dennis whether they thought politicians should be allowed to be in office after seventy.

“No!” they chorused with one voice.

“Why not?” my natural follow up.

And with the refreshing candour of those living through their seventies each one of them said some version of the same thing.

“Your mind starts to go, your memory weakens, it’s too old to have that much responsibility and that much power!”

No one else was around. None of them were measuring their words. They just spoke with a refreshing candour, acknowledging the sharp reality that every man and woman in their seventies is forced to reckon with. We are not what we were. We are physically, emotionally, cognitively and intellectually deteriorating. We can’t handle full work days, our capacity to absorb stress has weakened, our awareness of others has narrowed. We are at the other end of our lives and we are no longer capable of the kind of weighty pressures and decision making which was common place in our lives just a decade ago. And as it is of Ron, Mo and Dennis so is it true of all of us at seventy. I have not met the seventy year old who would disagree.

And to experience some certainty as to my thesis I sought the advise of my other Council of The Wise, this one my friends Bob, Harold and Burt in Deep Bay BC. Now in fairness Burt is just sixty-five so he is at best a ‘Wannabee member of the Council of the Wise’ but it is always a good thing to bring along the next generation in the event of well, you know, one of the current members ‘not being available any longer’. I’m trying to be delicate here. Besides Harold is way past seventy, so it averages out. In any event, I posed the same question and with the same passion they too answered with one voice. Seventy is when those who seek political office should be stamped with a ‘Best Before Date’.

Of course there will be exceptions. And this is not applicable to private corporations. They can do what they want with their money, and take whatever risks they want. No this is about government. This is about a world which seems increasingly on the verge of nuclear conflict, of catastrophic climate change, of despots and desperation, of idealogues and protest, of intractable, cleaving social disruption. This is a world which delivers crushing, intractable pressure on our leaders, everyday. There is simply too much at risk for exceptions. Let us be wise in ways one can only be after a lifetime of experience, let us be advisory, let us give good council.

But do not let us be in charge.