No Country for Old Men?

“I’m older than dirt and I have more scars than Frankenstein,” has been a standard McCain line on the campaign trail for some time and it makes perfect sense for the cranky septuagenarian to pre-empt the issue of his advanced age with self-effacing humour just as he did in his appearance on Saturday Night Live this past weekend.

Should it matter that he’s a cancer-prone geriatric known to suffer from “senior moments” (as Fox News anchor Britt Hume described his repeated confusion over the difference between Shia and Sunni Iraqis) who has been a fixture in Congress for almost a third of a century? The serious answer is “No” but it’s still a fair question given that a recent Pew Research Center survey found that 50% of respondents said they would be less likely to vote for someone “in their 70s.”