Forget trying to age Hillary out of race: Column

President Ronald Reagan had a great line that he used to deflect insinuations that he was too old to occupy the Oval Office: "People sometimes ask me how I stay looking so young," he would deadpan, his eyes twinkling, "And I tell them, 'Well, I just keep riding older and older horses.' "

Reagan was 69 when he first won the presidency in 1980 -- but didn't look it -- and Democrats who made his age an issue were really trying to say he wasn't the sharpest knife in the drawer, and was getting duller by the day.

I thought of that recently while reading a New York Times report that some Republicans are toying with the message that Democrat Hillary Clinton, who will be 69 in 2016, is too old to run for president -- that she's a throwback to an era barely known by the youngest generation of today's voters.

Really? This message was thought up by the party that nominated John McCain for president in 2008, when he was 72? The party that clings to the memory of Reagan, who walloped Democrat Walter Mondale among young voters in 1984, when he was 73?

I don't think the age issue is going to work with Clinton, other than perhaps among sexists, misogynists and women who like to make snarky comments about other women's appearances. I don't know how old Clinton will look in three years, but I do know this: she should run for the Democratic nomination, and win it. And she should win the White House, not only because she's a woman, but because she's a pragmatist who has more experience and political savvy than any candidate either party is likely to offer up.

My bias stems from having four daughters and from looking fruitlessly for evidence that there is no ceiling in this country that women can't breach. Nearly two dozen countries around the globe have female heads of state, and dozens more have had them in the past. Clinton is the best hope for putting the USA in that league.

Not that it matters, but I don't agree with her on some issues. In fact, she's had a knack for doing things that irritated me. Among them were trashing the White House Travel Office when she arrived as first lady in 1993, patronizing African-American voters by trying to affect a black dialect while campaigning in 2007 and 2008 before black audiences in the South and especially standing by Bill Clinton all those years while he flaunted his adultery.

And I don't believe that winning the White House would be a cakewalk for Clinton, no matter what the polls may suggest now. Republicans would savage her on the Benghazi fiasco -- you could expect to see ads showing the four Americans killed there twinned with a scowling Clinton yelling to a congressional committee; "What difference does it make?" They'd portray her as the godmother of Obamacare. They'd question her effectiveness as secretary of State. They'd try to make her defend the most unpopular parts of Obama's sketchy record as president.

But she needs to take it on, and here's an image that helps explain why: On the day before the Times article mentioned above appeared, I was visiting a retirement center and my eyes were drawn to a large poster on a wall by a computer station. The poster showed all the presidents of the United States – 42 white guys and a black man (Grover Cleveland appears twice, having served non-consecutive terms).

And I thought, how can a country that is 13% black have elected a black president, but one that is 51% female not have elected a woman president? I understand that symbolism sometimes trumps substance in politics, which, in my view, explains Obama's two presidential victories, as well as his narrow defeat of Clinton for the 2008 Democratic nomination.

But, eight years later, why not go for both symbolism and substance? Hillary Clinton in the White House would represent both. And she doesn't need to ride older and older horses to get there. She needs to get a copy of that poster of presidents and display it at every campaign stop. Then she wouldn't need to even whisper, "Vote for me because I'm a woman."

The poster would say it for her, loud and clear.

Don Campbell, a former Washington journalist and journalism educator, lives in Oakwood, Ohio, and is a member of Paste BN's Board of Contributors.

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