A debate zinger for the ages: ‘I am not going to exploit, for political functions, my opponent’s youth and inexperience’
David Longstreath/AP
Reagan’s age would grow to be a 1984 common-election issue.
In the to start with debate with Mondale, the president acquired his info scrambled and sent a rambling summary statement that left his own advisors fretting about his chances that November.
Reporters wrote about Reagan’s hair being grayer and that his hearing assist was visible.
Some Democrats tiptoed all over the president’s mental acuity.
“You can look tacky and it can backfire by generating you glimpse crass,” Dottie Lynch, who had served as Hart’s main pollster, advised The Miami Herald.
Other folks went proper at it.
“Reagan showed his age,” Rep. Tony Coelho of California, the head of the Property Democrats’ marketing campaign procedure, claimed. “The age situation is in the marketing campaign now and men and women like me can chat about it, even if Mondale are unable to.”
Then came Kansas Town, the internet site of the next and final presidential discussion.
The moderator Henry Trewhitt questioned Reagan about staffers who explained he’d been exhausted immediately after his first debate with Mondale. He required to know irrespective of whether that could be a detriment if the president had to deal with a overseas-coverage disaster these as the 1 Kennedy experienced to take care of — with “extremely minimal snooze” — when Soviet Union missiles ended up staying deployed in Cuba.
Reagan once again relied on humor — to wonderful outcome.
“Not at all, Mr. Trewhitt, and I want you to know that also I will not make age an concern of this campaign,” Reagan replied. “I am not heading to exploit, for political uses, my opponent’s youth and inexperience. If I however have time, I might insert, Mr. Trewhitt, I could possibly insert that it was Seneca, or it was Cicero, I you should not know which, that explained, ‘If it was not for the elders correcting the mistakes of the younger, there would be no condition.'”
A number of months later on, Reagan won reelection in a person of the most lopsided presidential elections in US record.
