For Presidents, Age Is Not Just A Number

“One of the mixed blessings of being 20 and 21 and even 23,” Joan Didion wrote, “is the conviction that nothing like this, all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding, has ever happened to anyone before.”

But of course it has. Whether we are 20 — or 2 or 91 — we feel, by and large, what billions of others have felt at that same age. Writers know this. Our great books are filled with universal observations about our every year, their desperations and delights.

All of us age more or less in step — you, me and our two presumptive nominees for president. Donald J. Trump, who turned 70 last week, would no doubt recognize himself in the words of Isaac Bashevis Singer, who wrote, “A man of 70 should know what he wants.”

Read more at NY Times.