Too Old to Run?

Approximate Reading Time: 4 minutes

Am I the only one who thinks it’s crazy, solely on the basis of their ages, that Joe Biden or Bernie Sanders is viable as a candidate for president? It’s not a matter of ageism on my part. I’m 73, though I don’t “feel” it, as is statutorily required of me (that is, to say I don’t feel it). But I wouldn’t want myself to be nominated to any office, never mind CEO of the US, solely because I am too well aware that statistics are not on my side. And even less so on theirs. They’re older.

Then there’s the matter of how that job “ages” the job-holder. It’s been evident of every occupant of the office since it killed FDR, which is 74 years ago. Not that the effects, whatever they may be, are irreversible.

Jimmy Carter two days ago became the longest-lived former president. George HW Bush, who just died, was also in his 90s. No one asked either of these guys if they wouldn’t have wanted the job in their latter years—not to suggest they didn’t want a longer term in office than either of them got. Bush was 69 when he left office. Ten years younger than Biden would be if he ran and won, and assumed office in 2021. And Bernie is just a wee bit older than Joe, so he’d be closer to 80 standing on that platform in a chilly January inauguration. And Carter was 56 when he lost his bid for a second term.

It could be that Jimmy and Pappy were fortunate being spared the vagaries of the stresses of office in their declining years. There are those whose lives belie what I am implying, like, say, Rupert Murdoch and Warren Buffett (just to keep this argument ecumenical), but they aren’t having to deal with being President.

My sense of all this would be mitigated somewhat if we, like certain tribal peoples, were a society that did not just give lip service to venerating elders, but actually constituted a culture that included a system of governance whereby it was the elders who ran things.  And everyone accepted it. That’s what “culture” means in part.

Never mind a tribal council of sachems and elderly wise men and women, there won’t even be a minyan of ten “seniors” to hustle up for a cabinet session. Not that the current completely rational compensatory demand for greater diversity of electoral representation would stand for it, if there were.

No one running who was that old, and who was rational enough to expect to be elected, would choose a running mate anywhere close to 70. Donald Trump, who’s a year younger than me, chose a feckless non-entity (who mainly reinforced a perceptible bias of opinion of a plurality, at least, of likely voters), but still a guy who was not even quite 60 on election day in 2016.

In the case of either Biden or Sanders, significant weight would have to be given to strategies for running mate selection to respond to one facet of the selection question. What is the likely perception by a significant number of voters that they would be voting, as they rarely have had to in previous elections, for the inevitable occupant of the White House possibly well before the first term is up.

America is generally characterized as the land, if not of opportunity, then surely as the land of boundless optimism. Which is how we elected William Henry Harrison, Zachary Taylor, Warren G. Harding, and Franklin D. Roosevelt as president, and ended up with John Tyler, Millard Fillmore, Calvin Coolidge, and Harry S. Truman, respectively – though not predictably in any case. The ages of the incumbents when they involuntarily left office were 68, 65, 57, and 53. As for why I speak of optimism, let me just say, Quayle, Cheney, and Pence; while saying nothing of the merits of the men who chose them as running mates who got into office, regardless.

Please note the argument is not to be wary in any case, and that we should merely be careful of what we wish for, because fortune acts with equal severity on young and old alike. The argument is about actuarial tables of mortality – the odds, if you like – and keeping an eye not so much on the age, but the substantive qualifications of the running mate.

This “actuarial” argument is co-extensive of any question of Trump’s fitness for office, and he will still be younger than either Sanders or Biden, and it cannot be ruled out that Trump will not be shy to suggest that unlike him, his opponent is “losing it” not least because of senility; in fact, the counterfactual quality of such an assertion – very much from the heart of the Trump school of rhetoric – almost guarantees that we would hear it. On the purer political grounds of who to run against Trump, the age factor must be considered. A younger candidate for the Democrats will not nullify the proven impact of his strategy of vulgar denunciation by ridicule and derision of any candidate daring to run against him.

Unclear what any analysis of Sanders’s or Biden’s appeal to young voters consists of, and whether it would persist through an actual candidacy. The spirit of the new younger, “millennial” Democratic caucus, and the gathering power of an argument for change, and not just change, but a re-direction for both parties suggests either of them may not sustain the political momentum needed to make it to the nomination. The Democrats are only that much more susceptible to criticism, because of the innately fractured nature of its factionalism, and so they are more visibly and obviously ripe for a contentious struggle for dominance of the party going into the 2020 election cycle. Young Republicans, or young conservatives, are a gathering force as well, and seem overdue to mount a powerful (and possibly eruptive) effort at revolution and revitalization after a corrosive four years of Trumpism.

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Eating the Lobster

Approximate Reading Time: 5 minutes

“You can really have no notion how delightful it will be
When they take us up and throw us, with the lobsters, out to sea!”
—“Lobster Quadrille,” Lewis Carroll

One of the things I’ve learned, almost by necessity, since I am never usually preparing something like lobster for more than two people anyway, or, if I’m making what I call a Paella Royale (with shrimp and clams in the shell and lobster pieces), it’s best to cook with lobsters that are the size called, for some strange reason, “chicken” – which is to say, ideally, about a pound and a quarter or very slightly more – but the absolutely best size for individual lobsters is between one and a half and two pounds (or very very slightly less).

One of the better Paella Royale dishes I’ve made, this one in 2009. photo © Howard Dinin

I never understood the virtue of getting gigantic, and presumably more and more mature, that is, long-lived specimens, simply because one is going to attempt to feed say six or eight people. For one thing, that’s probably counter-productive to sustainable lobster populations (which, I admit, do seem, realistically, to wax and wane for reasons they keep thinking they understand, but really don’t). I can say that, because it makes sense.

Anyway, if there were more than two eating lobster, I get more than one lobster. For one thing, it’s easier to deal with the claws and tail, etc. of smaller lobsters in every aspect of preparation, cooking, serving, and eating.

But even more important, on the subject of executing one’s dinner before cooking it, it’s much easier to kill a lobster quickly for what one can persuade oneself are humane (i.e., lobsterian) reasons when they are smaller.

I still remember the ordeal of trying to plunge the tip of a very sharp blade of a 10” chef’s knife into the very tough head of a lobster that weighed somewhere north of two-and-a-half pounds. It was an ordeal for me, and I’m sure for the lobster. Especially as I was trying to minimize the discomfort the arthropod was going to experience at the same time I was trying to eliminate any possibility whatsoever of doing some harm, especially inadvertently to myself.

There is the expedient of cutting through the thinner carapace on the bottom of the beast, prior to bisecting the bug, one-half from the other. But as I can relate, it would still have been a bit of an ordeal, as when the size of the lobster increases so does the thickness of every aspect of his shell, even on the bottom.

Something to keep in mind.

I also happen not to have had particularly tender meat from a very much larger specimen, not even in restaurants. That may be due to some kind of confirmation bias. But I’m pretty sure I’ve always had quite tender enough lobster meat from a nice small manageable shellfish.

It’s True: Before Cooking Comes the Killing

And there’s nothing else to call it. It’s not just tradition, certain crustaceans and mollusks (and the lobster as an arthropod with a carapace, along with shrimp, krill, and even barnacles, make up the preponderance of the taxon; it’s not exactly on point, but these are, to my mind, the creatures that exclusively deserve the cognomen “shellfish;” oysters and clams and such are mollusks, and they may live in water, but they aren’t fish, and those aren’t shells) should be alive just prior to preparing them for being eaten, usually through the intervention of being cooked.

I’ll grant, lobsters do have a heart, and it’s a noble, but I think mainly a symbolic injunction to kill a lobster instantly by stabbing it in the heart with dispatch. But the lobster heart is pretty small, and it’s hard to locate from outside the body. Also, not unlike ours, it’s not precisely centered.

Also, lobsters have slightly decentralized nervous systems. So there’s a problem anatomically speaking with the more recent “humane” technique of providing for a conscientious instantaneous execution of the beast by plunging a sharp tool into its head. Their brains are tiny, and though there’s a major nerve in the “head” (the portion just behind the pointed section at the front, between the eyes and antennae, there are two other nerves there that serve auxiliary functions and likely keep it alive and kicking).

The Swiss government feels so strongly about humane killing of lobsters, they have made it a crime to boil them alive. Their prescribed method is electrocution (and naturally there’s a commercial product for restaurants, which costs about $3500, that does the trick), but this is impractical. In lieu of it, they say one should slightly anesthetize the lobster by giving it a dunk in salt water, and then plunging a knife into the head (at the same point I mentioned above, behind the pointed section of the head).

The alternative method, though not sanctioned by the Swiss government, it isn’t forbidden either, and the one that makes most sense is the one that most chefs with an ounce of humanity (shouldn’t that be lobsterity?) in them is to plunge a knife in the mid-section, with the lobster on its back.

The method fully, then, seems to be to plunge the knife in the mid-line and to split the creature in half as quickly and neatly as possible.

Let’s deal with the traditional methodology quickly by the way, even as we consider the philosophy behind thinking about the humane way to do the delicious creatures in. The worst thing you can do to a lobster is boil it alive. Other than that, there doesn’t seem to be a scientist alive at the moment who will say with certainty that a lobster (or a crab for that matter, or a crayfish) feels pain in the way humans understand pain. They have nerves, but nerves don’t exclusively transmit pain, in addition to whatever other signals they transmit.

And though it’s clear that experiments have proven that crabs, for one, will avoid their dark hidey-holes in order to avoid whatever it is they experience when shocked with electricity, it’s clear, for once and for all (for now) that the way to kill a lobster quickly is with a knife and a rapid dissection in half.

One of the reasons Jasper White’s pan roasted lobster recipe became my favorite way of cooking the beast is because it came out right about the time I learned how cruel it is to boil or steam (actually steaming is worse, apparently) a lobster, and cutting it in half alive is necessary to make the recipe. And then there’s the bourbon in his recipe, and a little extra helps assuage any sense of guilt as you anticipate the pleasure eating this awesome dish – actually any dish that includes lobster, because, let’s face it, even right out of the shell just after cooking them very quickly, they’re uniquely delicious.

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