We have been forced to hear much about how the nation is ready for change.
We have had the concept of youth rammed down our throats like a plunger down a blocked toilet.
And yet I am now able to offer concrete facts that tell me the next president will, indeed, be John McCain.
Yes, people choose to mock his advanced years.
But the only number that has been proven to affect a man’s judgement is, as the spritzing Mr. Spitzer can testify, sixty-nine.
One need only look at the news this week to see that senior citizens are more in charge than ever.
Firstly, we have the visit of Pope Benedict. Or Eggselency Benedict, as he is known to those closest to him, and those who would like to be.
This man is almost a hundred years old.
Yet, when he became the Great Pontifficator, one of his first (and some would say, most lucid) decisions was to fire the Vatican’s robemaker, Annibale Gammarelli.
Annibale and his loyal elephants had been knitting the holy threads since 1792.
The new Pope brought in someone a little more contemporary (hard not to), a man called Mancinelli, who has been in business for far less time than Giorgio Armani. Or Ann Taylor.
Benny, as he’s known to many of Rome’s custom apparel salesmen, enjoys shopping in Prada (which was, strangely, for many years next to the Footlocker just by the Spanish Steps) and his shoe collection is the envy of many a woman.
And, of course, even more priests.
Here is a man at the peak of his powers. Standing next to him, John McCain is barely the head altar boy. Barely.
Talking of sex, you may have read this week that a nursing home in Kildegaarden, Denmark, has endured considerable scrutiny over its policy on, well, screwtiny.
Nurses at the very caring Kildegaarden Home For the Elderly and Not Really There found a very fine solution to the problem of the male inmates who were constantly pestering them for succor of a sexual nature.
In order to relieve themselves of the burden of being their patients’ playthings, they hired prostitutes who were only too willing to erect the flag of capitalism on a new and as yet underdeveloped peak.
Of course, the bobbleheads of the Pro-LifesFrustrations League leaped from their toilet seats in bare-bottomed admonishment.
This is myopia most desperate.
If eighty-year-old men with Alzheimer’s are both willing and able to fly the flag of their virility, how can we not see John McCain as a worthy succ(or)sessor to some of the greatest presidents?
Bill Clinton comes to my head, for example. As I’m sure he does to yours too.
If that were not enough to prove that man improves with age, the rumors dripping out of Russia surely solidify my thesis.
Vladimir Putin, the Russian Prime Minister, former President and very active fisherman, is reported to be divorcing his fifty-year-old wife.
Worse (or, depending on your perspective on democracy and relationships, better) he has allegedly taken up with a twenty-four-year-old woman called Alina Kabayeva.
Here is the ultimate proof of aging virility’s complete hold on the world: Ms. Kabayeva is a gymnast.
No ordinary gymnast, but one of the greatest gymnasts in her chosen gymnastic form- no, not that pre-pubescent leaping over vaults and balancing on a two inch wide piece of wood.
Ms. Kabayeva is a rhythmic gymnast. Let me repeat that. A rhythmic gymnast. Who is apparently marrying a fifty-eight-year-old fisherman.
Barack Obama is a forty-something-year-old who looks fifty-five. He is trying and failing to give up smoking. He is bringing up two young children.
Unlike priests of advanced years, inmates of retirement communities and aging political leaders, there is a certain probability that he is neither able to find the time nor the energy to experience the enjoyment of complete abandon.
And without that enjoyment, how can any man (or woman) enjoy the favor of an electorate which always votes for virility over virtue? (I even include the support for Richard Nixon in this assertion)
I think it will be a landslide. Or, at the very least, an earthmover.
The Pond thanks rileyroxx for his eyepopping elderly erotica.
Pond Culture 