Three men with a combined age of 222 are ruling the world

Are we living in a new gerontocracy? You could probably be forgiven for thinking so. A look at the international landscape reveals an alarming overrepresentation of aging (male) leaders.

In this year’s U.S. presidential election, voters will witness a repeat of what we experienced in 2020 between the two old men. It will be the oldest presidential battle in American history, pitting 81-year-old Joe Biden against 77-year-old septuagenarian Donald Trump.

The baby boomers’ firm grip on power is not limited to the United States. Major economies such as China and India are ruled by 70-year-old Xi Jinping and 73-year-old Narendra Modi respectively.

Global players with huge influence include 71-year-old Russian President Vladimir Putin – who has just locked up the presidency for another six years and is waging a war in Europe that is causing rifts in Western unity – — and Israel’s 74-year-old Benjamin Netanyahu, who is embroiled in a war. Destructive conflicts in the Middle East.

Who will turn the tide? Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority is 88, and Egypt’s Abdel Fattah al-Sisi is 69. The world’s oldest national leader, President Paul Biya of Cameroon, is 91 years old.

President Joe Biden, 81

Biden is the oldest president in U.S. history and will be 86 at the end of his second term if he is re-elected in November.

A series of embarrassing gaffes has fueled concerns that he is incapable of fulfilling the duties of the presidency. He has variously confused the wars in Ukraine, Iraq and Gaza, confused the presidents of Mexico and Egypt, and discussed speaking with former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl in 2020 — despite his death in 2017 .

A few days ago, he appeared to confuse former French president François Mitterrand, who died in 1996, with France’s current leader, Emmanuel Macron.

Particularly damaging was a report released last month on Biden’s handling of classified documents. While the report by Republican Robert Hull, a former Trump appointee, made no accusations, he described the Democratic president as “a compassionate, well-intentioned old man with a bad memory.”

Biden, who has been labeled an “elderly” by the Trump campaign, insists: “I have a great memory.”

“We disagree with some of the inaccurate and inappropriate comments in the special counsel’s report,” his attorneys said.

However, the Trump campaign has sought to capitalize on the issue, with polls showing many Americans fear he is too old for the position.

In an NBC poll last month, 62% of voters, including half of Democrats, said they were primarily concerned about Biden’s physical and mental health being unfit to serve again as president. Ninety-five percent of Republican voters said they had severe or moderate concerns.

Vladimir Putin, 71

Elder hegemony is not limited to the United States. In Russia, Putin has been in power in some form or another for over 20 years and was just re-elected in a landslide in a sham election.

Putin has been Russia’s president since 2000 and, apart from a brief stint as prime minister due to Russia’s constitutional two-term limit (which he later abandoned), has silenced anyone who opposes his rule. He could conceivably run for re-election in 2030, when he would be 78 years old.

He has exceeded the average Russian male life expectancy of 68.2 years. However, unsubstantiated claims that he suffered from illnesses such as cancer and Parkinson’s disease have followed him for years, and the Kremlin was forced in 2022 to deny rumors that he was ill or dying.

With no viable alternative candidate on offer in this weekend’s election and just weeks after his most prominent rival, Kremlin critic and opposition politician Alexei Navalny, was likely murdered by the state, Putin won a fifth term in a landslide. Ella Pamfilova, head of Russia’s Central Election Commission, announced on Monday that she had received 87% of the vote, or 76 million votes cast.

The West almost unanimously condemned the vote as a farce and a “pseudo election.” British Foreign Secretary Lord Cameron said: “Putin eliminates political opponents, controls the media and then crowns himself the winner. This is not democracy.” He pointed to “widespread reports of electoral irregularities” and any potential opposition to the Ukraine war. Opponents were “quickly disqualified”.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky declared that Putin is “drunk with power and is doing everything he can to rule forever.”

The Golos movement, an independent group that monitors Russia’s elections, dismissed the results, saying: “We have never seen such a violation of constitutional standards for a presidential campaign.”

Xi Jinping, 70

Like Putin, China’s Xi Jinping has spent the past few years expanding and consolidating his iron-fisted rule over the Chinese Communist Party and the country, making himself China’s longest-serving head of state.

In 2023, he began an unprecedented third term as party chairman after approval from China’s rubber-stamp parliament. In October 2022, Xi Jinping was again awarded a five-year term as General Secretary.

His predecessors Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao relinquished power after a decade in power as part of the party’s efforts to ensure regular leadership changes and prevent a return to authoritarian rule.

However, President Xi Jinping abolished term limits in 2018 and concentrated power in his own hands to a level not seen since Mao Zedong.

Who will be our next aging leaders?

The day after this year’s 2024 US presidential election, either Biden or Trump will rule the country, barring a health crisis.

Like his rivals, Trump made many embarrassing mistakes during his campaign. He has repeatedly confused the current president with former President Barack Obama, telling a crowd earlier this month: “Putin has so little respect for Obama that he started throwing around the word nuclear weapons. You listen Here we go. Nuclear. He started talking about nuclear weapons today.”

He appeared to conflate former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, his former rival for the Republican nomination, with former Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, telling supporters: “Nikki Haley in 2021 1 “Responsible for security during the Capitol riots on March 6.”

Before withdrawing from the race for the Republican nomination, Ms Haley used the missteps to criticize the former president, saying: “He is not the same person he was in 2016. He has said no.” She called Trump and Biden for “grumpy old men” and “trippy seniors” and called for “mandatory mental competency tests for politicians over 75.”

“These are the people who make decisions about our national security. These are the people who make decisions about the future of our economy. We need to know they are at the top of their game,” she added.

However, an NBC News poll last month found that only 34% of voters expressed serious concerns about whether Trump has the mental and physical health to run for a second presidential term.

What does this tell us?

Across countries around the world, older people are increasingly holding leadership positions. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is 70; Iran’s Ali Khamenei is 84; and Norway’s King Harald, 87, recently had a pacemaker installed.

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Mr. Biya of Cameroon was born in 1933 and took office in 1982 more than 40 years ago. Cameroon’s elections have been plagued by rampant fraud.

Research shows that leaders of less liberal countries tend to be older. The Washington-based Pew Research Center found in 2023 that the median age of leaders in countries classified as not free was 69, compared with 61 in countries classified as partially free and 61 in countries classified as partially free. 58 years old in a free country.

“The United States is one of only two countries classified as free with leaders who are in their 80s or older. The other is Namibia, whose president is 81-year-old Hage Geingob.”

Britain’s Rishi Sunak is 43, Canada’s Justin Trudeau is 52 and France’s Macron is 46.

Reasons for the high number of older leaders include increased longevity, the fact that older generations control most of the wealth, and even, amid a backlash from globalization, voters are turning to more traditional or conservative policies embodied by older politicians.