George Fisk, an 85-year-old retired business administration professor, takes in this information, unimpressed. At 71, he was "going gangbusters," too. What puzzles him is not whether McCain can do the world's hardest job but why he'd want to.
"He ought to have his head examined," Fisk suggests.
Fisk lives at Pennswood Village in charming Bucks County, the Ivy League of retirement communities filled with Princeton and Wellesley alums who glue themselves to C-SPAN. He and his friend Topper, also known as Norman Cook, 84, a former television news director, have turned up this afternoon to discuss the age question.
So what that McCain's face is lumpy from skin cancer surgery, or that bones broken during years of torture prevent him from raising his arms to comb his hair?
"I can't comb my hair either, but for a different reason," Fisk says, removing his black cap from his bald head for emphasis.
Being older than 70 doesn't mean you're washed up, these men agree, but the ominous weight of the presidency does give them pause. What if he's called to action at 3 in the morning?
"He wouldn't have the acuity to handle it, that would be my fear," Fisk decides. "I mean, at 70 I was still driving, but I had already totaled a couple of cars."
Not all seniors find this prospect daunting, as we later learn from Joan Kooker, 82. When asked if McCain is too old, she responds: "Heck no."
Back at Pennswood, it's clear Fisk and Cook wouldn't vote for McCain even if he were 50. They don't like his stand on the war, among other things.
Fisk won't say whom he supports, but Cook is a Barack Obama man. "I don't hold McCain's age against him," Cook says, "but I think there is a value in having a younger person. There is an idealism I think Obama possesses."
Age doesn't weigh heavily at Ann's Choice, a retirement community outside of Philadelphia where residents have gathered for lunch in the Acorn Pub.
It isn't that McCain is so old, it's just that Obama is so refreshingly young. That's how Carl Malissa, a 79-year-old retired general manager of an air conditioning company sees it. His wife Fay, 74, loves Hillary Clinton.
"You could throw up from all the corruption and scandal. Obama is too young to be deeply corrupted," Carl Melissa says.
"I'm not living with you," his wife of 55 years announces. "I'm moving out and taking my cat." The cat, she notes, is 10.
"He's not old," she quickly adds.
Not that it matters.
Faye Fiore writes for the Los Angeles Times.
