Questions of Age and Competence

By Evan Thomas

The President seems fit -but is he too detached?

His hair is thick and wavy; his rolling gait has just a hint of swagger. Since Ronald Reagan became President, his chest has actually grown broader by three inches, thanks to his lifting weights. Posing for a photograph out at his ranch, he looks rangy and hale, an ageless cowboy. On a podium with waving flags and floating balloons, he can mesmerize and uplift. But when he speaks extemporaneously, the effect can be more halting than inspirational. He has long been notorious for bungling facts. He often mangles syntax. Somehow, with a quip or a smile, he usually manages to fight free of his verbal tangles, leaving listeners only uneasy, not alarmed.

But last week's presidential debate, watched by at least 80 million television viewers and parsed by scores of journalists, greatly magnified Reagan's rhetorical failings. His hesitation seemed like uncertainty, his digressions like rambling. He suffered by comparison with his opponent, Walter Mondale, who is 17 years younger and was, on this evening at least, considerably quicker and more composed. To many viewers, the kindly, anecdote-dropping uncle suddenly seemed old and a little out of it. To others, even those willing to give him the benefit of the doubt about his age, he seemed somewhat blathery and ill at ease with the issues.

At 73, Reagan is the oldest President in U.S. history. At the end of a second term, he would be 77. Too old to be President? Before the debate, the question was hardly mentioned, so great were the Democrats' fears of a backlash. "Reagan created an issue that has not yet come up in this campaign -age!" exulted California's Tony Coelho, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. "He looked old and acted old." Asked if Reagan was doddering in the debate, Coelho replied, "Well, he didn't quite drool."

Reagan at first tried to deflate the issue with quips. "I'll challenge him [Mondale] to an arm wrestle any time," he joked. Retorted Mondale: "We had a little brain wrestle on Sunday night." Reagan's physician, Dr. Daniel Ruge, volunteered that Reagan was "tired, everybody was tired" in the debate. Told of Ruge's comment by reporters, Reagan's response was defensive and somewhat baffling: "You got it wrong. He was tired."

With the age question dogging Reagan, the White House released the full results of a medical checkup on the President last May at Bethesda Naval Medical Center. The supervising examiner concluded that "Mr. Reagan is a mentally alert, robust man who appears younger than his stated age." The report noted some "diminished auditory acuity" (Reagan wears a small hearing aid in his right ear) and the presence of a small, benign polyp in his colon. The President takes weekly injections for allergies, but no other medicine. Reagan aides reminded reporters that Mondale takes three pills a day for high blood pressure.

About 10% of Americans between the ages of 65 and 75 are senile. The President clearly is not. Doctors watching the debate saw no signs of slurred speech or outright memory loss, the usual telltales. They did suggest that Reagan should be regularly tested for mental acuity. Though Reagan promised in 1980 that he would undergo testing for senility if elected, so far he has not. Earlier this year he told an interviewer that he would take the tests "only if there was some indication that I was drifting ... Nothing like that has happened."

The slow response time that Reagan showed in the debate is not uncommon among older people. Said Dr. James Spar, a geriatrics psychiatrist at UCLA: "It's the kind of forgetfulness that when you reach back for a fact, it isn't there. But 20 minutes later, it comes back to you." Stress, not age, may explain Reagan's slips. "Any of us could be capable of that kind of performance live on national TV," said Dr. William Applegate, a geriatrics expert at the University of Tennessee.

There is no reason to believe that Reagan's intelligence is diminishing. "The competence of an individual does not change much with age," said Dr. T Franklin Williams, director of the National Institute on Aging. "Many people in their 80s and 90s are quite capable of being President." Gerontologists point out that China is vigorously run by Deng Xiaoping, 80, and that half the members of the Soviet Politburo are over 70.

Reagan has aged less visibly in office than most of his modern predecessors. Indeed, his robust example may undermine the notion that age necessarily saps vigor. Said Spar: "Nowadays people between 65 and 75 are statistically more like young people than they are like old people." At about age 75, many people cross a vaguely defined line between what gerontologists call "young-old" and "old-old." They become less vigorous and more infirm. But doctors caution that the effects of aging vary greatly from person to person, and that Reagan is on the young side of old.

Reagan aides profess not to be worried about the age issue. White House polls show fewer than 10% of the respondents expressing concern about Reagan's age and, says one adviser, "so far the effect on how people say they are going to vote is zero." Some point out, in a kind of backhanded defense of their boss, that he was mentally loose and sometimes sloppy with facts even when he was young. But that does not settle the question. "The real danger isn't that [his debate miscues] connote an age problem," said former Reagan Campaign Manager John Sears. "They raise questions about his competence."

That was the issue Mondale seized on. For weeks he has tried to depict Reagan as a dangerously detached leader who skates by the hard problems of governing. The debate provided more ammunition. Mondale told TIME: "The President must have control of the central facts in order to lead his government. If you don't have that, you can't lead."

Reagan's handlers have long tried to protect the President from exposing his detached approach to governing. They know that he is superb at making speeches but poor at answering questions, that he prefers hitting broad themes to picking over details. He has had fewer press conferences (26) than any President since Richard Nixon. His advisers worry about how he handles unrehearsed discussions with foreign leaders. Reagan sometimes has difficulty remembering names, much less complex negotiating positions. Meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Nakasone in June, he repeatedly referred to his own Vice President as "Prime Minister Bush."

But anyone can confuse facts and forget names. For the most part, Americans have been willing to forgive Reagan his minor gaffes, his seemingly untaxing work schedule, even his occasional brief naps in Cabinet meetings. His strength as a leader made his other failings seem picayune. Reagan has skipped over the minutiae of governing to articulate a clear vision for America. It can be argued that that is precisely what a President should do.

Still, some details are far from trivial. A year ago, Reagan admitted to groups of Senators and Congressmen that he had only recently learned that the Soviets were so heavily dependent on land-based missiles. He conceded that it was no wonder that the Soviets rejected as lopsided his original strategic arms control proposal, which urged that Moscow's land-based missiles be sharply cut back. Equally startling was Reagan's suggestion, at a news conference in May 1982, that sea-launched missiles are less dangerous than land-based missiles because they can be recalled after firing (they cannot).

Reagan continues to show little intellectual curiosity about the great dilemmas he must confront. He rarely seeks to convene experts in the Oval Office to toss around ideas on thorny subjects like the Middle East or arms control. Instead, he prefers to follow the consensus recommendation of his staff. If his advisers are capable-and most are-Reagan can afford to trust their judgment. But his staff is not elected, and some, most notably White House Chief of Staff James A. Baker, may not stay on through a second term. In sum, the issue Americans should debate is not Reagan's age but his effectiveness and the validity of his approach to governing.

-By Evan Thomas. Reported by Douglas Brew/Washington, with other bureaus

With reporting by Douglas Brew