Is It Time for Baby Boomers to Step Aside for the ‘Rabbit Hutch’ Generation?
Asthe nation hurtles toward another White House run between Donald Trump and Joe Biden, Senator Mitt Romney says he’s too old to run again. Which raises two questions: When does old become too old? And who gets to decide?
These were the questions that came to mind when I watched Senator Romney’s announcement that he would not run for reelection in 2024. But I was also reminded of the married Republican couple I met while cruising the Caribbean just before the pandemic. And The Rabbit Hutch.
Before getting to the latter, let’s look at the evolving nature of age and provide some historical context for the concept of passing the torch.
Why Romney wants to step down
The Utah Senator is 76 now. Should he seek reelection in 2024, he will be in his mid-80s at the end of his term. He says it is time for the Baby Boom generation to step aside. Time for a younger generation of Americans to take over.
There is an inverse echo of John Fitzgerald Kennedy in Senator Romney’s remarks. When JFK said, “The torch has passed to a new generation of Americans,” he was 43 years old.
His predecessor Dwight D. Eisenhower, at age 60, was then the oldest U.S. president in the nation’s history. Baby Boomers had only known him as a balding old man.
We had textbook knowledge but no visceral awareness that at one time in his life, Ike (as he was known) had been commanding general of the victorious Allied Forces in Europe. That he’d once been as strapping and fit as any other cadet in the West Point graduation class of 1915.
But by the time JFK came along
with his handsome youth, his hatless head full of thick dark hair, it seemed that Eisenhower had always been old. Because that was the only way we’d ever seen him.
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