Age

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80: Retire and enjoy old age.

“I’m not saying it would be impossible to be president when you’re in your 80s, but I think it would be quite a challenge,” said Wichitan Myron Frick, 79, who still does vehicle body shop work.

“I think after people get older, they don’t heal as well after they get sick or they have health problems. I don’t think they think as clearly or as quickly as younger people,” Frick said.

“The arbitrary number of 80 is just that,” said Sherry Phillips, 80, of Wichita. “I worry about people discarding a very capable individual because of their age. That’s ageism, and we fought a lot for our rights to be able to continue to work.”

Phillips noted that U.S. Supreme Court justices don’t have an age limit — the oldest on the bench was Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., retiring at 90 — and that some younger officeholders aren’t qualified to serve. She mentioned 34-year-old U.S. Rep. George Santos of New York, who recently pleaded not guilty to charges of fraud and money laundering.

Phillips thinks President Biden has done well, but she hopes neither Biden nor Trump will run in 2024.

Wichitan Paul Wilcoxen, 83, said it can’t be predicted when a mind is going to slip. A candidate at 80 can have a sharp mind, but that can change in a matter of weeks or months, Wilcoxen said, and it’s more likely to happen to people in their 70s and 80s than in their 50s and 60s, he said.

“I feel like someone around 80, if their mind is good, they’re OK, but I think probably somebody around that age in politics should have to be tested probably yearly to make sure their mind isn’t starting to go,” said Wilcoxen, who had a career in construction.

To Wilcoxen, it’s obvious that Biden’s mental abilities have faded, and he wonders which non-elected personnel in his administration are making decisions. He calls it “kind of upsetting” that there are people running the country who didn’t get elected.

“Trump’s mind’s good now, but when will his mind slip? I don’t know. But the older we get, the greater the chance it’s going to happen,” Wilcoxen said.

Ada Soyez, 76 and a retired nurse in El Dorado, thinks being over 80 is too old for the presidency.

“I think it needs to be a younger person, but yet we need to have one that has lots of experience,” Soyez said, specifying the experience of having served in the military.

“I think 80 needs to be a cutoff line, definitely,” Soyez said.

David “Chester” Chesmore, 84, of Derby, was an aircraft mechanic in the U.S. Air Force, and he doesn’t see anything wrong with a candidate running for president in his 80s.

“Do a good job, that’s the main thing,” Chesmore said. He elaborated on the qualities desired: Be honest with people, be very truthful, and try to get along with other people.

Wichitan Bonnie Krenning worked in nursing and management,.

July quiz: Find these fictional places

By Nancy Wheeler

Match the fictional place with the work which made it famous. The answers appear below.

A. "Anne of Green Gables"

B. "Pride and Prejudice"

C. "All Creatures Great and Small"

D. "A Song of Fire and Ice"

E. "Gone with the Wind"

F. "Batman"

G. "A Prairie Home Companion"

H. "Lost Horizon"

I. "Winnie the Pooh"

J. "Gulliver’s Travels"

K. "Adventures of Tom Sawyer"

L. "Peter Pan"

M. "The Hobbit"

N. "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone"

O. "The Wizard of Oz"

She retired at 79 and is now 92.

“I think most of it depends on their health,” Krenning said. “If they are well and everything, they can be just as effective at that age as someone younger,” she said. A candidate’s health habits have to be weighed, too, she said.

Elma Broadfoot was mayor of Wichita from 1993 through mid-1995. She’ll be 80 in August.

“Our society, I believe, has pretty much told us or led us to believe that people beyond a certain age kind of lose the ability to function properly and particularly from a thinking standpoint.”

She thinks she can still problemsolve and bring reason and logic to her view of things.

“There may be people 80 or older, certainly younger, who don’t have the abilities to function, in this case, as president of the United States,” she said. She said she’s seen Biden’s missteps — physically and in speech but overall she thinks he has had “a very effective presidency.” A couple of his opponents don’t function quite as well, particularly morally, Broadfoot said.

In the 2020 presidential election, ocer 20 percent of ballots were cast by voters age 65 or older.

The general wisdom from political scientists looking at older voters is that they don’t constitute a bloc, according to David Ekerdt, professor emeritus of sociology and gerontology at the University of Kansas.

“You’d think they would, but they don’t,” Ekerdt wrote in an email.

Like voters at other ages, their votes are more likely to be based on things like political preference, gender, income, and urban/rural background.

"They just don't vote only as 60-, 70- or 80-year-olds," Ekerdt said. Contact Mary Clarkin at mary.e.clarkin@gmail.com.