Nancy, Bernie and Joe are older. Are they wiser?

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Wednesday, July 17, 2019

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Joe Biden campaigning in New Hampshire last week. Adam Glanzman for The New York Times

Frank Bruni

Opinion Columnist

It’s not just Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders and the Democratic presidential primary — I swear it isn’t — but lately I can’t get the subject of age out of my mind: how much it matters, how much it doesn’t, all the good things that come with it, all the bad. It resists tidy definition. It’s immune to blanket truisms.

You don’t get better as you age. Then again, you don’t get worse. Or maybe you don’t but someone else does, or the judgment can be made only in categories, by dividing the different aspects of you: your body, your mind, your mood, your munificence. I’m 54 now, and aging is the hardest thing I’ve ever done. It’s also the greatest blessing that I’ve ever been given: I’m not just still around, but I also savor the wisdom of greater perspective and the freedom of letting many of the demands I once made of myself fall by the wayside. The hell of aging is limits. But that’s the heaven of it, too. Sometimes to have the parameters of your life shrink is to be unburdened of too many decisions and of indecision itself.

I don’t think it’s petty, cruel or insulting to consider that Biden is 76 and that Sanders is 77 when evaluating them as presidential candidates, because energy is an arc, and it bends over a lifetime toward depletion. But there are attributes far more important than it, and there’s terrible age discrimination, certainly in America.

In my own profession, I see people swept aside all the time because there’s no longer a patina of freshness on them or an aura of novelty around them. Never mind the work they’ve put in. Never mind the insights they’ve accrued. They’re drearily familiar — yesterday’s news — and what senior manager isn’t revitalized by the proximity and presence of newness? Of youth? I see bosses in their 50s frowning on subordinates in their 50s because those other people are mirrors that they’d prefer not to look into.

But then I also see people in their 50s and 60s too unwilling to recognize that room must be made, that others must have their day and that diversity doesn’t just mean race, gender, class, creed. It means age. It means generation. Someone in his or her 30s sizes up situations from a different angle — and will notice different things — than someone in his or her 50s, 60s or 70s. Isn’t the ideal to have both viewpoints on a team? There’s no need to choose sides: Nancy Pelosi, 79, or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, 29? In a better, calmer, saner Washington they collaborate respectfully, the half a century between them a resource to draw from, not a divide to be finessed.

I have written that Biden seems more oriented to yesterday than tomorrow. I have also written “In Defense of the Gerontocracy,” noting that Pelosi has had moments of command and keen judgment that are the fruits of her many years. Age as an issue is one big fat oxymoronic mess, and maybe I’ve contradicted myself.

Or maybe I haven’t, because you can’t come to any one conclusion about age. You can’t take any one position: not in employment practices, not in political picks, not in your own expectations about when you’ll hit your stride, when you’re in your prime and which phases of life will be a slog or a cakewalk. You have to size up the particular person or circumstances. You have to be awake to individuality and alert to subtlety.

And you might want to check out some of the following, which were all published recently and are some of the main reasons that age is on my mind. There’s the book “Late Bloomers: The Power of Patience in a World Obsessed With Early Achievement,” by Rich Karlgaard. There’s also the best seller “Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World,” by David Epstein, who observes that while Mark Zuckerberg famously boasted that “young people are just smarter,” research shows that “a tech founder who is 50 years old is nearly twice as likely to start a blockbuster company as one who is 30.” In the Atlantic, Arthur Brooks wrote an essay titled “Your Professional Decline Is Coming (Much) Sooner Than You Think.” Also in that magazine: “Tyranny of the 70-Somethings,” by Andrew Ferguson.

I know that’s a mountain of reading. May you have a surfeit of years over which to scale it.

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The 2020 Opponent Trump Really Wants

From left, the Democratic representatives Ilhan Omar, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib and Ayanna Pressley at a news conference. Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA, via Shutterstock

Many of President Trump’s tweets are clearly the bastard products of heedless impulse. Many exist at the hazy confluence of spontaneity and purposefulness, spleen and strategy.

But the tweet that convulsed the political world over the past four days — in which he suggested that four congresswomen of color, three of them American-born, “go back” to the countries from which they came — didn’t fall into either of those categories. He clearly had help with it: Look at the language, nothing like his cruder expectorations. But also consider how neatly his attack and the racism in it fit with his demonization of the Central Park Five; his insistence that Barack Obama wasn’t born in the United States; the anti-Mexican and anti-Muslim emphases of his presidential campaign; his vicious caricatures of developing countries.

This was Trump distilled. Trump assoluta. And make no mistake: It augurs and previews a 2020 re-election campaign whose grotesqueness, as I write in my latest column, will make his 2016 effort look like a garden party with cucumber sandwiches.

In the column I explain some of the thinking behind the tweet: mainly, that he wants to make Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib and Ayanna Pressley the face of the Democratic Party and to run against them, not against whomever the party winds up nominating. He’s more confident about his ability to vilify them, and he’s betting that Americans will find the prospect of their ascent more threatening than they do his own sustained indecency and frequent incoherence. They have first or last names that for many Americans aren’t a cinch to spell. His own name spans three simple syllables, the last of them a blunt thunder clap.

But to take the tactic that he’s decided on, you have to be willing to bring out the worst in many voters — to encourage it — and to do great damage to the country. Peter Baker, one of The Times’s many excellent political writers, put it perfectly in his analysis of Trump’s tweet, writing that the president “woke up on Sunday morning, gazed out at the nation he leads, saw the dry kindling of race relations and decided to throw a match on it. It was not the first time, nor is it likely to be the last. He has a pretty large carton of matches and a ready supply of kerosene.”

Burn, baby, burn. That’s a slogan truer than Make America Great Again.

For the Love of Sentences

Russell Crowe as Roger Ailes in the Showtime miniseries “The Loudest Voice.” JoJo Whilden/Showtime

Readers bring less patience to newspaper articles than they do to books, so the sentences near the beginning are arguably the most important. And as Bonnie Bailey of Birmingham, Ala., pointed out, there are terrific ones at the start of James Poniewozik’s review of the Showtime miniseries “The Loudest Voice,” about Roger Ailes and Fox News. James notes that Ailes begins narrating his own story “as he lies dead on the floor. I mean, why wouldn’t he?”

“He built a noise machine, Fox News, that amplified conservatism and then devoured it,” James goes on to write. “Even after he was forced out at Fox for sexual harassment, his worldview continued to blare from it. What, you thought a little thing like dying would shut Roger Ailes up?” Read the whole review, though. It’s a gem from opening to close.

The same goes for the recent appraisal of TAK Room by The Times’s chief restaurant critic, Pete Wells. Judith Klinger of Manhattan urged a special citation of it, and I’m glad she did. She spotlighted a sentence about the restaurant’s location in a deluxe city-within-the-city that has drawn much derision. “Parts of Hudson Yards are still under construction, but enough has been finished for most New Yorkers to figure out that this fistful of glass needles stabbed into the West Side wasn’t built for them,” Pete snipes. Gaping at the prices on the TAK Room menu, he reports that the bargains are eggplant Parmesan for $30 and New Zealand salmon for $42. “After that, please turn off all electronic devices and place your tray tables in the upright, locked position, because we are going up to $66 and $75 before reaching a cruising altitude of $85,” Pete jokes. “Look down there — don’t the people look just like ants?”

While we’re on the subject of food (and drink), I want to recommend Bobby Finger’s recent exploration of what separates “cold brew,” whose decadent taste reflects time-consuming preparation, from plain old iced coffee. “If you’re unfamiliar with the difference,” he explains, “think of cold brew as traditional iced coffee’s unhurried fraternal twin. Cold brew can’t go a day without a long, luxurious bath, while iced coffee can barely swing a quick shower; cold brew has read ‘The Goldfinch’ (and is planning on a reread before the movie is released later this summer), but iced coffee unfortunately never had the time — what with work and the kids — though it has seen the trailer on mute.”

Richard Bitner of Lancaster County, Pa., praised David Khalaf’s deeply moving “Modern Love” essay about his family’s decision that he should protect his grandmother from the knowledge that he’s married to another man. “I rang the doorbell of my grandmother’s house before remembering to pull off my wedding ring,” the essay begins. “I slipped it into my pocket and, just like that, I was someone else — an actor playing a fictional version of me.”

In the specific passage that Bitner singled out, Khalaf reflects on the awkwardness of being asked by his grandmother if he’s living with anyone. “What could I tell her?” David wonders. “Yes, Nana, I am living with the love of my life, a man who chipped away my walls, brick by brick, until he could see me inside. When the hole was large enough for me to fit through, he held out his hand and I took it and walked into the world, exposed. This man who rescued me from my own facade, the one I am forced to reconstruct for your benefit.”

Both Alexander Henke of Madrid and James Turner of Hampton, Va., cited the Peter Baker paragraph that I reproduced in the second item of this newsletter.

Now for two more shout-outs from me. In an excellent Opinion section contribution from Costica Bradatan about the difficulty of sustaining a democracy, this part struck me as especially eloquent and vivid and true: “Genuine democracy doesn’t make grand promises, does not seduce or charm, but only aspires to a certain measure of human dignity. It is not erotic. Compared to what happens in populist regimes, it is a frigid affair. Who in his right mind would choose the dull responsibilities of democracy over the instant gratification a demagogue will provide? Frigidity over boundless ecstasy? And yet, despite all this, the democratic idea has come close to embodiment a few times in history — moments of grace when humanity almost managed to surprise itself.”

Finally, I draw attention to the first sentence of Somini Sengupta’s dispatch from Chennai, India, about its dire water shortage because her words demonstrate that outstanding writing isn’t necessarily about acrobatic syntax, inventive vocabulary, wicked wit or anything as showy as that. Sometimes it’s about spare, sensibly chosen detail. “When the water’s gone, you bathe in what drips out of the air-conditioner,” Somini writes. And just like that, Chennai’s awful predicament comes fully alive.

On a Personal Note

Frank’s view of the sunrise in Turkey from an island in Greece.

As much as I hate flying — the contact sport of the boarding process, the impossibly cramped quarters, the endless delays — I always feel a little thrill when I’ve finally stowed my bag in the overhead bin, taken my seat and exhaled. I’m on the move. I’m going somewhere. Whether business or pleasure, it’s an adventure, a trip, and that means different scenery, different people, different events. Something surprising could happen. Nothing surprising could happen. I relish the uncertainty.

The trip last week was to Greece, and it was business, an exploration of an island whose odd economy intersects with my rare vision impairment. How so? That column is coming soon, and I hope you’ll look for and read it, because it touches on many big topics: the stealth wonders of the natural world, the scope of human ingenuity, the depth of people’s faith.

I enjoyed reporting it. And that’s partly because I enjoyed the travel. An old friend of mine once said that every time she visits someplace new, no matter what that place is like, she feels as if she’s been given a bite of a food that she’d never tasted and that she’s better nourished and bigger as a result. She has more experience in her. She has more information.

I feel as if my vocabulary has grown. As if I can observe and speak of the world more fluently because there are more images and sounds and scents in my brain. Although I’d been to Greece dozens of times — when I was based in Rome for The Times, covering Greece was among my responsibilities — I hadn’t seen mountains the precise shades of green and tawny that this island’s mountains were. I hadn’t smelled air identical to its, which carried, in certain spots, notes of lavender, thyme and oregano all mingled together.

I hadn’t seen these particular sunsets or sunrises. In truth I seldom see sunrises, because I’m more of a night than morning guy, but thanks to jet lag, I woke up early one morning last week, so I watched the slow blooming of rose, crimson and persimmon light behind mountains that were actually in Turkey, to the east. I got goosebumps, not just from the colors but from the entirety of my circumstances — so far from home, in such an unheralded location, with all these new facts in my notebook, doing a job that sometimes doesn’t feel like a job at all.

True, I was gathering the facts because of something upsetting and challenging: the badly compromised sight in my right eye and the knowledge that my left eye is at risk. But these days I’m more focused on blessings, which I see more clearly than ever. I’m privileged to have the kind of work, means and mobility that allow me to move far and fast through the world. I can still fly. I’ll soon be settling into another seat on another plane, headed in another direction.

And wherever it takes me, I’ll be bigger after than I was before.

To nominate favorite bits of writing from The Times to be mentioned in “For the Love of Sentences,” please email me here, and please include your name and place of residence.

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If you want to share your thoughts on an item in this week’s newsletter or on the newsletter in general, please email me at bruni-newsletter@nytimes.com.