Change Voting Age to 16? Try 80!

He has seen a lot of silver-tongued politicians come and go - and a lot of once-popular ideas do a lot of damage to a lot of people.

He remembers the hopefulness of the War on Poverty, for example. We’ve spent more than $20 trillion on it since the 1960s, and though it has helped millions avoid poverty in terms of food and housing, it has given us too much poverty of the spirit - too many broken families and children with limited opportunities to reach their fullest potential as human beings.

At 87, your bones ache. You find yourself in long conversations about roughage in your diet and good prostate health. You’re in no mood for nonsense. You aren’t easily swayed by the passions of the moment. You don’t feel the need to faint at political rallies - unless you forgot your nutrition drink that morning.

You’ve paid way too many taxes and seen billions wasted on everything from unnecessary wars to pipe-dream programs that enrich lobbyists who get their pals in Congress to fund them more than they have done any good.

You know you may not be here much longer. All you care about is what you can do to make our country’s future better for your children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. And that is the lens you would use to evaluate candidates and ideas. We would be better off as a country if our voters did more cranky critical thinking and indulged in less feel-good emotional nonsense.

Bring on the octogenarian voters!

Copyright 2020 Tom Purcell. Tom Purcell, author of "Misadventures of a 1970's Childhood," a humorous memoir available at amazon.com, is a Pittsburgh Tribune-Review humor columnist and is nationally syndicated exclusively by Cagle Cartoons Inc. For info on using this column in your publication or website, contact Sales@cagle.com or call (805) 969-2829. Send comments to Tom at Tom@TomPurcell.com.