How old is too old? This isn’t the first time the question has dominated a presidential race. For a brief moment, 40 years ago, the country could talk of nothing else. I should know: I was one of the reasons.
One spring day in 1984, I was chatting with Burns “Bud” Roper, the veteran pollster. At the time, I was The Wall Street Journal’s White House correspondent, covering Ronald Reagan’s reelection campaign. Thanks to a surging economy, Reagan seemed poised for an easy victory in November. The campaign was shaping up to be a bore. “Bud,” I asked, “is there any chance he could lose?”
When it came to polling, Bud had seen it all, going back to Harry Truman versus Thomas Dewey. He told me he hadn’t found anything that could stop Reagan. Then he paused. “Actually, there is one thing,” he added. “People won’t say it if you ask them directly, but when you look deeply at the numbers, a lot of them are concerned about his age.” Reagan was 73 at the time.
Four years earlier, Reagan’s age had been a major theme of the Republican primaries; he was sworn in only a few days before his 70th birthday, making him the oldest person ever to become president. Now he was four years older, having survived a near-fatal shooting in the interim, yet the issue of his age was scarcely discussed. Bud’s theory was that many voters had concerns about Reagan’s age wedged in the back of their minds, even if they wouldn’t admit it. The only thing Reagan had to fear, Bud thought, was some triggering event that would bring those concerns to the fore. “This guy can’t even afford a bad cold between now and Election Day,” he said.
Not long after our conversation, the Journal’s Washington bureau chief, Al Hunt, asked each political reporter for a list of ideas for major stories they wanted to work on. I put Reagan’s age on my list—a look at how the preceding four years had changed him, and why it wasn’t being discussed. I remember Al being uninterested. A month or two later, we repeated the exercise. I again proposed the age story. Al again passed on it.
Finally, in August, the political reporters met in Al’s hotel suite at the Republican National Convention in Dallas to plan our coverage of the final sprint to Election Day. I decided to try one more time, figuring that if we didn’t put the story on the agenda now, we never would. I don’t know if Al was persuaded or if he just wanted to shut me up, but he agreed to let me do it. I’d be working with James M. Perry, the Journal’s senior political writer.
Jim was a legend. He was in the Dallas motorcade when John F. Kennedy was assassinated, and over the next three decades, he covered every major politician and campaign in America. Despite a grumpy demeanor, he was a delight to work with—and a seemingly effortless writer. Many nights, as the Journal’s deadline neared and most reporters were in states of increasing panic, I’d look up from my keyboard to find Jim standing over me, hands in his pockets, asking if I’d caught last night’s game. A few minutes before deadline, he’d shuffle back to his desk. You’d then hear a burst of typing, and he would reappear to show me what he’d written: “Whaddya think of that?” It was invariably—and maddeningly—flawless.
We got to work on the story. I spoke with management experts, psychologists, and gerontologists; Jim spoke with political experts and pollsters. Eventually, I produced a draft we were happy with, though I was still struggling with the first paragraph. I wanted three facts to illustrate how long Reagan had been around, but I had only two: When Reagan was born, in 1911, William Howard Taft was president, and the American flag had only 46 stars. Jim, watching me agonize, ambled off to the part of the office where we kept various reference books, and returned a few minutes later. “Windshields,” he announced, “were beginning to show up as standard equipment on automobiles.” We had our lead.
When Journal reporters collaborated on a story, the one who did the writing typically got top billing, which in this case meant me. Now, I have a more than healthy ego, but such was my respect for Jim that I put his name first. When he saw the order, he told me to reverse it. “You have no idea how much shit we’re going to get for this story,” he said. “Your name goes first.”
On Friday, October 5, we submitted the draft to our editors in New York, who said they’d try to run it in the next week or so.
Two days later was the first presidential debate between Reagan and his Democratic opponent, former Vice President Walter Mondale. Debates had always been a comfortable venue for the old actor, providing some of the most memorable moments of his political career, including his famous question to Americans during his 1980 face-off with Jimmy Carter: “Are you better off than you were four years ago?” This debate was different. Reagan stumbled, rambled, and blew his closing statement. No one had ever seen a public performance from him like this.
The next morning, nearly all the news coverage acknowledged that Mondale had won. But there was little discussion of why. Jim and I arrived at the office with the same thought: The story has to run tonight. Our editor in New York agreed.
After we added a reference to Reagan’s debate performance and a couple of quotes, the article ran under the headline “New Question in Race: Is Oldest U.S. President Now Showing His Age?” What followed were the most interesting two weeks of the campaign—perhaps the only interesting two weeks of the campaign.
The story led the evening network newscasts, at least one of which aired an illustration with a giant picture of the Journal’s front page. Our article was even referenced in the next morning’s New York Times, which must have pained their editors as much as it would have pained us had the roles been reversed.
Reagan’s lead in the polls narrowed as his age dominated the news cycle. At one point, I was interviewed on CNN by the anchor Bernard Shaw, who tried every which way to get me to say that the president was senile. I refused, because even if I thought he was—which I didn’t—I wasn’t damn fool enough to say so on national television. (Years later, I ran into Shaw at an airport. “I remember you,” he said, his eyes narrowing. “You’re the guy who wouldn’t say Reagan was senile.”)
Why did our story break through? After all, everyone already knew how old he was. But his debate performance punctured voters’ willing suspension of disbelief. Our article gave voice to evidence that could no longer be ignored. That it appeared in the Journal—widely viewed as pro-Reagan because of its conservative opinion pages—only added to the impact.
Two weeks after the first debate came the second. The stakes felt much higher this time, but Reagan held his own. In anticipation of the inevitable question, he was armed with what became one of his most famous one-liners: “I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent’s youth and inexperience.” Less well remembered is the fact that Reagan began to sag as the debate wore on. This really was the effect of his age, I believe: After 90 minutes on his feet under the hot TV lights, the 73-year-old simply didn’t have the stamina of a younger man.
When it came time for his closing statement, Reagan began to ramble about driving down the Pacific Coast Highway, with no point or conclusion in sight. I was sitting in the audience next to Francis X. Clines, my New York Times counterpart, who grabbed my shoulder so tightly that I think I’ve still got the fingernail marks. “Rich, it’s happening again!” he hissed. Finally, the debate moderator, Edwin Newman, cut Reagan off because he’d used up his allocated time. I’ve always thought that, in that moment, Mondale missed his last, best opportunity to stay in the race. If only he’d had the presence of mind to say, “That’s okay, Mr. Newman, let him finish.” I think Reagan would still be driving down that highway.
After the debate, I stepped into an elevator and found myself surrounded by a number of Reagan’s aides. They had endured two weeks of recriminations from Reagan’s allies, and even from Nancy Reagan, for supposedly mishandling preparations for the previous debate. Now they were the most relieved-looking group of guys I’d ever seen. When we got to my floor, Chief of Staff James Baker clapped me on the back. “Well, Jaroslovsky, we took care of your issue,” he said, propelling me off the elevator with a friendly—or perhaps not-so-friendly—shove.
I’m still not sure what we saw in 1984. Was it, as I thought then, the natural effects of the progression of time? Or was it a precursor to Reagan’s Alzheimer’s diagnosis, which he announced to the world a decade later?
In any case, Reagan took care of the age issue that year. But if I had to guess, today’s two leading candidates won’t. If either wins, we’ll have a president who’s older at his inauguration than Reagan was on the day he left office. As they stumble and ramble their way through the rest of the campaign, the issue will only get more pressing. Time is funny that way.