Why are so many of the world’s top jobs still held by grumpy old men?

By Vijai Maheshwari

Whoever wins the next U.S. presidential election will be the oldest person in history to have been elected to the country’s highest office. Donald Trump will be 74 when voters head to the polls in November, nearly a year older than Ronald Reagan was when he clinched his second term. Joe Biden will be 77, just a month younger than “the Gipper” was on his last day in office. Bernie Sanders will be 79.

The winner of the contest will join the ranks of aging world leaders that include India’s Narendra Modi (69), Russia’s Vladimir Putin (67), China’s Xi Jinping (66), Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (66), and Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro (65).

Call it the boomers’ last stand. Born in the aftermath of World War II, the most entitled generation is clinging on to the global levers of power. At a time of rapid societal, technological and political change, why are so many of the world’s top jobs still held by grumpy old men?

Part of the answer is economics. In the U.S., for instance, boomers control two-thirds of America’s wealth, and run its major corporations: The average CEO is a boomer. It’s the same story in Hollywood, the arts and the media. Even the music that unites America — from the Beatles to the Beach Boys to Fleetwood Mac — is the soundtrack to the ‘60s, the tumultuous and hedonistic decade when the boomers came of age.

President Trump is a classic boomer, with his blow-dried hair, hyperbole, arrogance and innate sense of privilege. Like others of his generation, he came of age at a time when nothing was true (because you weren’t supposed to believe your square elders!) and yet everything was possible.

The boomers are so successful in America that even when young people agitated for radical change, they chose Sanders, an aging boomer, to lead their socialist revolution. Even millennials seem to want a grumpy grandpa in charge of their country.

It’s not just in America that the youth vote trends geriatric. A majority of Russia’s youth — dubbed “Putin’s generation” by the media — have chosen stability over change, and still support the authoritarian president. Now Putin plans to change the constitution so that he can reset the clock and serve two more presidential terms. That would make him 83 years old when his final term expires in 2036, or as the comedian Trevor Noah recently joked on the Daily Show, “just old enough to stand for president in America.”

Russians have mostly shrugged at Putin’s attempt to stay in power into the winter of his life. His predecessor, the alcoholic Boris Yeltsin, gave old age a bad name, but athletic Putin projects vigor and power even in his late 60s. And presiding over Russia into his 70s doesn’t seem so strange now that septuagenarians rule America.

Populous China is ruled by 66-year-old President Xi, who has basically anointed himself ruler for life.

And even though more than half of India’s population is under 30, voters handed their graying, nationalist prime minister another five-year term last year. Even Brazil, where the population is just as young as India, plumped for grumpy grandpa Jair Bolsanaro in recent elections. It’s a similar story in Egypt, Hungary, Turkey, Poland and countless other nations: The boomers are still in charge.

Another part of the reason for the longevity of the “me generation” is that boomers tend to support their own. Twice as likely to vote than the youth, they have an outsize influence on political life.

There’s also another darker and primordial reason for boomers’ dominance. As the backlash against globalization and immigration grows, frustrated voters fantasize about turning back the clock, and going back to a hallowed past when things were simpler and better. And who better than a grumpy grandpa to lead the charge back to the gloried past?

India’s Modi energizes his Hindu base by demonizing Muslims and promising to return India to its ancient, pre-Islamic glory. His attacks on the country’s secular ideology have been resisted by liberals, but are widely popular among more nationalistic Indians. Russia’s Putin also promises to return the country to its status as a great power during the Soviet Union. The annexation of Crimea and the Kremlin’s muscular foreign policy are popular despite the hardships caused by Western sanctions. China’s Xi heralds a strong China freed from the shackles of Western imperialism, ready to challenge America in leading the world, its former glory restored.

It’s no accident that most boomer leaders are strongmen, who twist the law to achieve their illiberal and populist goals. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and Poland’s de facto ruler Jarosław Kaczyński openly flout Brussels diktats to reduce immigration, attack liberals and appease their conservative bases. Their promises of a strong state that cracks down on immigration and crime and upholds “traditional family values” are echoed around the globe, from the Philippines to Brazil.

For the authoritarian-minded among them, the coronavirus epidemic sweeping the globe offers a further excuse to tighten their grip, even as they are among the most vulnerable: The virus has decimated the aging leadership of Iran and has infected many aging politicians from Republican Senator Rand Paul to the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier and the wives of the Spanish and Canadian prime ministers.

For the elderly leaders who survive it, an unstable post-coronavirus situation could even consolidate their appeal further. The boomers built their wealth on a period of unparalleled globalization, trade and freedom of movement. Now, as borders go up and the world tips into recession, people may turn to them for a reminder of happier, wealthier times. The boomers will be all too happy to roll back the clock if it lets them stay in power a little longer.


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