2 April 2016

Sanders not the first major Democrat to seek presidency at 74

That honor belongs to Alben Barkley, the senator from Kentucky who served as Harry Truman’s vice president — and as the oldest vice president in U.S. history. Two months after Truman announced he would not seek re-election in 1952, Barkley said he was available for the nomination, his age, heart problems, and cataracts notwithstanding.

But when Barkley arrived in Chicago, the president of the United Automobile Workers union, 45-year-old Walter Reuther, told Barkley that labor wanted a younger candidate. The Democrats nominated Gov. Adlai Stevenson of Illinois, 52, who lost to Dwight Eisenhower by 7 million votes, carrying just nine states and winning only 89 electoral votes.

Barkley won a senate seat in 1954. He died of a heart attack while delivering a speech in 1956.

Bernie Sanders is hale and vigorous at 74, the beneficiary of good genes and modern medicine. But if elected president, he would be 75 when inaugurated, the oldest president in U.S. History.

Hillary Clinton will be 69 when the next president takes office. Donald Trump, 70. Ted Cruz and Paul Ryan, 46. John Kasich, 64.

If adopted again at the 2016 Republican Convention, Rule 40, now the subject of some dispute, would seem to preclude the nomination of Ryan or Kasich.

If Hillary Clinton is nominated, she won’t choose Sanders as her running mate because of his age. If she believes she needs a traditional liberal on the ticket to hold and energize Sanders’ followers, she’ll probably choose someone such as Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio or Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island. If she decides to pander to the technocratic wing of the party, she might tap Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia. If she chooses to pander to identity politics … well, I’ll leave that speculation to the readers of Flathead Memo.