There’s no evidence in this morning’s papers of a big celebration, but John Howard, Australia’s second-longest-serving prime minister, turned 70 yesterday. Whatever one wishes for the man, Howard’s departure from public life and public consciousness has been remarkably complete.
Howard was already perceived as “old” when he regained the Liberal leadership back in 1995, at the age of 55. Later he promised to consider retirement “when I’m 64”, but in fact he stayed on until his career was terminated by the electorate in 2007, aged 68.
Yet the idea that a person is too old for political leadership at 70 is relatively recent, and is still unknown in many parts of the world. Winston Churchill was still wartime prime minister at 70, and Gladstone and Palmerston were still prime minister at 80. More recently, Ronald Reagan was seen as a very successful president well into his 70s.
Nor has our reduced tolerance for older politicians been matched by any great enthusiasm for youth. Coincidentally, the Rudd government today has raised the issue of extending the franchise to 16-year-olds, but its support for the idea seems lukewarm at best, and predictable opposition from the Coalition means that such an obvious and overdue reform is unlikely to happen for some years.
Just last week a Conservative by-election win gave Britain its youngest MP, Chloe Smith, who is already 27. Yet Charles Fox, the eighteenth century liberal leader, entered parliament at 19, while his great rival, William Pitt, was chancellor of the exchequer at 23.
Diversity in one dimension often comes at the price of homogeneity in another. The parliament in which Fox and Pitt sat covered a wide age range, but a very narrow social range. Yet we seem to be going backwards in that respect as well; our politicians are increasingly drawn from the same apparatchik class, with the genuine representatives of the working class that Labor once provided now in short supply.
Our parliaments do have greater ethnic and gender diversity than ever before (although still well short of being representative of the population at large). But they otherwise present an almost uniform appearance of middle age, middle class and middling abilities. The handful of older members, such as the 74-year-old Wilson Tuckey, are clearly there only because they have doggedly resisted all efforts to remove them, rather than through any widespread recognition of their talents.
We do not have to regret the departure of John Howard, but we should regret the fact that Australian politics is not drawing from as wide a talent pool as it might.
“Howard’s departure from public life and public consciousness has been remarkably complete” – COMPLETE??! How was forgotten before he left!
“Ronald Reagan was seen as a very successful president well into his 70s.” By WHOM?
Dr Helen Caldficott picked that he was senile in a 20 min. interview in his 2nd year in office but amerikans gave him a second term, as they did the dumbest creature, including Caligula’s horse, ever to hold public office.
I do agree that the gene pool is very shallow AND narrow. A german friend tells me that over 70% of their Parliament are classified as “Beamters” – generally a functionary or civil servant or teacher but less than once in thrice someone who’s actually done anything in the real world – ya listening Arbid?
So much better that 70% of our snouters are failed, or never admitted, lawyers.
You deserve AR’s nonsense in reply Charles. I’ve never heard or read you before uttering complete rubbish but supporting votes for 16 year olds puts you in the “out-of-touch-with-youth” middle-aged category as well as showing up a big lapse in logic, or – surely not – sheer thoughtlessness.
I was still a youngish tutor of v. bright (and not so bright) law students when the vote was given to 18 year olds. Apparently all politicians wanted to be fashionable and not leave it to the rising tide of lefty thinking to make this great advance so decided that there was this killer argument, namely that, if they were old enough to fight (actually it was because of the foolish conscription policy that Liberals got themselves into this problem) they were old enough to vote, or perhaps it was something even more illogical, namely some view that they should be able to vote against conscription – a bit late really. As I knew very well what 18 and 19 year olds were like, even the brightest and best informed I could see it was just the ridiculous faddishness of the middle-aged because….. and here we get to the crunch… no one asked whether having the real stake in the country that 25 plus people did and just a little experience of the adult world and of adult motivation and of intelligent adult argument might have any relevance to the question whether our country would be improved by giving 18 year olds the vote. And you don’t seem to consider that adding a whole lot of ill-informed adolescents with no experience of working life to the voting roles in circumstances of complex modern life with many sources of attempted manipulation of some sophistication that they are just beginning to come to grips with might lead to many more votes being cast which are only casually related to the good of the good of the country – *however* defined.
The catalyst program on teenagers doesn’t tell us anything new, but we restrict the ability of under 18s to make enforceable contracts, to buy alchohol, to do something like driving that they are perfectly equipped to do except for the deficiencies of temperament and brain function that you might think relevant to the likelihood that they will cast a considered vote (other than for cash) without being carried away by populist prejudice and rhetoric or passing whim unconnected even to their own real interests. Presumably you would approve their marrying at 16 or younger, drinking alcohol without limit at night clubs and bars, driving trucks and joining the SAS. If not, why not? Do you seriously think it would benefit them or anyone to give them the chance to cast a vote which they would almost certainly, if at all thoughtful and sensible, regard as at best gravely ill-informed and not even in their own interests by the time they are five years older? Of course it will encourage some small number to get interested in politics earlier and presumably recruit some Young Liberals and Young Labor a year or two earlier than otherwise. Is that a good thing?
Thanks for the feedback. I’m afraid Mephistopheles & I will have to agree to disagree on civil rights for teenagers; my view is that if you treat people like mental incompetents, that’s the way they’re likely to behave. I think the fact that 17-year-olds can’t vote, buy alcohol or (with very narrow exceptions) make enforceable contracts is absurd. I really do think reducing those cut-offs to 16 should be uncontroversial, and I’d prefer 14.
Of course, lots of teenagers cast stupid, ill-informed, improperly influenced votes. So do lots of adults. Democracy will cope with one as it copes with the other.
As to who thought Reagan was a successful president in his 70s, he won a 49-state landslide at the age of 72, so he must have been doing something right.
Here’s the best I can do to find arguments in favour of increasing the proportion of foolish ill-informed voters. On some largely untested assumptions the idiocies of the young might tend to offset the idiocies of those in Second Childhood or, to be more charitable, the enthusiastic altruism of the young could offset the cynical selfishness of the old while the extremely conscientious young could simultaneously offset the feckless couldn’t-care-less and a-plague-on-them all attitudes of the elderly. And similar fact free irresponsible BS. Oh yes, it will be more difficult to round-up the postal votes of the young than of those in nursing homes so at least the young vote could be dilutive.
It is just about a good reason perhaps that the young will see and regret the errors and naivety of their first voting decisions earlier than they otherwise would and because of their youthful energy and available time contribute more and earlier to the flow on from understanding their errors….. However, that presupposes regrettable & acknowledged errors so it has drawbacks as an argument.
In the end, if I were to hope for the reclamation of your mind and good sense I would ask you to revisit (to conflate accurately) “Democracy will cope with teenagers’stupid, ill-informed, improperly influenced votes as it does with those of lots of adults”. You haven’t quite put a case for chimpanzees voting by their next friends but it does seem curious that you say that democracy will cope, by which I take you to mean metaphorically that the mechanisms of democracy function satisfactorily and will not be much affected in operation, even though the electorate is less capable of knowing its own interests or how any of even its sensible objectives can best be achieved.
I take it that you agree with the notion that the main purpose of a democratic constitution is to allow occasional changes of government without violence and with sufficient relation to changing opinion in the country, rather than sheer randomness (which would be a theoretical possibility for a change of government system) to stop too many people feeling disaffected. But that doesn’t constrain the design much so where do you get your principles for electing representatives? And, to the extent that we must appease people’s feeling that they should have and do have rights, do we care that people are enabled to vote so they can vote in what they perceive to be their own interests so they won’t feel disenfranchised and bolshy (in which case we shouldn’t have to worry about teenagers who are being supported by state and parents), or so that they will form an electorate best able to vote in their own interests, and/or so they can and are likely to vote high-mindedly for some greater public good? It doesn’t seem to me that either of the latter two reasons gives any support to votes for even younger people than 18 year olds still emerging from whatever fashionable influences our schools leave them under.