How Americans felt about aged leaders in 1776

+ genocide's resilient resisters US Edition - Today's top story: 80 is different in 2023 than in 1776 – but even back then, a grizzled Franklin led alongside a young Hamilton [View in browser]( US Edition | 25 April 2023 [The Conversation] [The Conversation]( Top headlines - [Tucker Carlson and fake authenticity]( - [Social media is causing ‘cognitive overload’]( - [Socrates on knowing what you don’t know]( Lead story President Joe Biden’s reelection announcement came in a modern package: a 3-minute, 4-second video posted this morning. The candidate, however, is a much less modern package: At the age of 80, he’s the oldest president in U.S. history – already. Much of the talk among voters has been, and will continue to be, whether he’s too old for the job. In his story today, historian Maurizio Valsania – a biographer of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson - reminds us that “[Americans have long nurtured mixed feelings about age and aged leaders](.” But, he adds, “It would be wrong to assume that the founding generation simply despised old age. Young America admired venerable old sages.” Old Benjamin Franklin, he writes, was “universally recognized as a prophet, a Moses dressed in American clothing.” A “worn-out” Washington, even after the revolution and his two-term presidency, “was ready to serve again in a military capacity.” And Thomas Jefferson? What “he achieved during the last years of his life, in his late 70s, is extraordinary,” writes Valsania. “In what he described as ‘the Hobby of my old age,’ he devised, organized and built a public university, the University of Virginia.” Had Biden lived in that earlier age, writes Valsania, “like his more illustrious predecessors, his value would have likely outweighed his deficits in the eyes of his country.” [[Sign up here to our topic-specific weekly emails.](] Naomi Schalit Democracy Editor ‘Our machines have now been running for 70. or 80. years,’ an old Thomas Jefferson, right, wrote to an even older John Adams, left. Photo12/Universal Images Group via Getty Images [80 is different in 2023 than in 1776 – but even back then, a grizzled Franklin led alongside a young Hamilton]( Maurizio Valsania, Università di Torino Americans have long nurtured mixed feelings about age and aged leaders. Yet during the country’s founding, a young America admired venerable old sages. 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