Wise men

I realized something: The next president and I were both born in the same decade--the 1960s.

Has there been a previous president who was born in the 1960s? No. The next most recently born was… yes, Bill Clinton, in 1946. (However, he's only a month and a half younger than George W. Bush.) They go back more than a decade from the one that saw both Barack Obama and me emerge.

This suggests that for the first time I will be of the same generation as the person occupying the Oval Office.

It was inevitable that eventually the presidency would catch up with me—or, perhaps, me with it. Still, it's a more profound moment of realization than I would have expected. I mean, of course there would come a day when someone born around my birth year would get elected. It's inevitable that someday a person who is younger than me will reside in the White House. Every year the pool of people who are younger than me and qualify to run for the office only increases; it will happen.

I'm not saying it's bad to have someone who comes from the same generation in that position. I'm sure a lot of people from my generation are absolutely giddy at that prospect, and they should be. I'm saying that I've long held a sub-conscious association: The president is old. Sometimes it's really old and sometimes it's kind of old, but still… old.

Don't get me wrong; it's fine that the president is old. There's a reason why there's a minimum age limit, and presumably it's to try to ensure that the person taking the office has a certain amount of life experience and presumed wisdom (of course, there's no guarantees—as evidenced by some presidents who shall remain nameless; hey, the people still voted for them).

And now I have constant reminders every time I turn on the news (okay, The Daily Show) that require me to consider whether I have the wisdom to run the country. (It's a short consideration. I don't.) In the past, with what I perceived as a generational disconnection between me and the person with access to the nuclear codes, it was always fine that they presumably had some wisdom I lacked. Now, the distinction cannot be applied based on a simple criterion like age.

I'm old, but I'm not prepared to be old. It's not that I mind getting older, or was clinging to my youth. No, I just cannot shake the sense that somewhere I went wrong and didn't learn… something I should have.

And it's all the fault of the president-elect.