The Washington PostDemocracy Dies in Darkness

Gene Weingarten: No, I’m not too old to run for president

Perspective by
Columnist
February 20, 2020 at 9:00 a.m. EST
(Alex Fine/For The Washington Post)

I hereby announce my candidacy for president of the United States. I will be running in the Democratic primaries.

I know it is a crowded field, and my climb might well be uphill. But I do feel that I am demographically viable. I am, after all, only 68 years old.

You are thinking that 68 is ancient, and that I am likely a drooling incompetent, but this is a race that has featured candidates such as Joe Biden, who is, I believe, 197 years old, and Bernie Sanders, who is so old he is technically dead, and Elizabeth Warren, who is only 51, according to the sexist trope of never revealing a woman’s true age, but whose first vote was probably for Herbert Hoover. Michael Bloomberg will be moving into the field later, and he is the same age as Santa Claus. The winner of this contest will be running against a man who successfully dodged the draft for the Crimean War.

STOP YELLING AT ME. I understand the awfulness of age discrimination, but I am also basically deaf, so your yelling won’t do any good.

By comparison to these candidates, I am John F. Kennedy in 1960, manfully grabbing the torch for a new generation. And I hear you, new generation. I am your champion. In short, together we will combat the Soviet threat to world hegemony and prevent the continuing ascendancy of the Habsburg dynasty.

I understand your concern. You are worrying that I am too young and callow to fulfill the duties of the office. Well, just for the record, I walk my dog twice a day and frequently use the bathroom without assistance. I am Jewish, but still so young that I do not speak with a Yiddish accent like everyone’s grandpa in the 1960s.

Here is my 10-point platform:

1. No dancing. Enough with the dancing already.

2. Every penny of the Social Security Trust Fund goes to people currently over 67.

3. Reinstate the draft. Make all those whippersnappers go to Vietnam and learn to be engineers instead of Instagram influencers.

4. As with the Pledge of Allegiance, all schoolchildren are compelled to formally acknowledge that Bob Dylan is the greatest genius who ever lived before they are allowed to listen to anything by Lil Nas X.

5. Escalators have to slow down.

6. By law, under the precedent set by fluoride, Viagra is introduced into the public water supply.

7. “Apps,” whatever they are, are illegal because nobody understands them.

8. By federal law, “the potbelly look” will become the fashion statement of the 2020s.

9. No solid foods in restaurants. Soup and gruel only.

10. Certain ageist terms will become illegal, such as “cougar,” “coot,” “geezer,” “dirty old man,” “old-man smell” and “now senile former newspaper writer.”

Email Gene Weingarten at weingarten@washpost.com. Find chats and updates at washingtonpost.com/magazine.

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