Lately I keep seeing comments about gerontocracy—the claim that the current crisis is the result of the world being governed by old men. Perhaps this is a good moment to confront that idea directly. But first it needs to be moved from an emotional outburst of vague meaning into something precise. In other words, the claim would have to be that the present crisis is the result of mistakes caused, at least in part, by senile decline—that if younger people had been making the decisions, events would have turned out very differently.
Donald Trump will turn eighty in a few months. If he were twenty years younger, would he be less combative and more prudent? Probably not. Combativeness tends to decline with age; prudence tends to increase.
Ali Khamenei was eighty-six. Yet he had led Iran for more than thirty years, and there is little evidence that his basic views or strategy changed in any fundamental way during that time. Moreover, the Iranian system of rule is oligarchic; no single individual determines everything.
Benjamin Netanyahu is seventy-six. During his time in power he has committed many dishonest acts and serious mistakes. He bears responsibility for the October 7 massacre of 2023. Yet his actions since then hardly show signs of senile hesitation or diminished resolve.
China’s ruler Xi Jinping is also in his seventies. Even if we assume that his cautious and deliberate strategic approach is partly related to age, it is difficult to argue that this is a liability.
Vladimir Putin, too, is over seventy. It is true that he made a catastrophic mistake in 2014, when he failed to use the power available to him to take control of Ukraine. His hesitation cost hundreds of thousands of lives, endangered the survival of the Russian state, and perhaps even the physical survival of some of the peoples living there. But wait a moment: in 2014 Putin was sixty-two.
And when we compare these men with politicians a generation younger—Emmanuel Macron (48), Keir Starmer (63), or Petr Fiala (60)—it is not obvious that youth translates into greater competence.
Moreover, studies I have cited here suggest that crystallized intelligence—the form of intelligence most important for complex decision-making—peaks around the age of seventy. Among people with good health care, it may peak even later.
In short, many of the people making decisions today are in what may well be the optimal age for handling difficult choices. If events are nevertheless moving in the wrong direction, it is not because of their age.