Why does US tend to have rather old leaders (> 60) while more and more European countries have young ones (<40)?

Question

This questions deals with the age of presidential candidates in US. The most upvoted answer argues that:

The main reason is simply that president of the US is the very top position that can be achieved for a (US) politician

This article shows a trend for electing young leaders (presidents, chancellors) in Europe:

Across Europe, stodgy career bureaucrats have been pushed aside in favor of a new guard of young, fresh-faced politicians.

In the last year alone, France, Ireland, Estonia — and now Austria, where the 31-year-old Sebastian Kurz is poised to take power — have elected leaders under the age of 40. Meanwhile, Belgium, Greece, Malta and Luxembourg have in the last four years elected heads under the age of 45

However, being a president or chancellor in an European country is also a top position, so I expect a similar argument to also apply here. So, clearly there is another discriminant that leads to such a big age difference (>= 70 vs. < 40).

Question: Why does US tend to have rather old leaders (> 60) while more and more European countries have young ones (<40)?

Answer 1

I'm not terribly sure that leaving outliers aside (both Trump and Macron are such) there's that much of a difference, historically, between the major European countries and the US. The Economist ran a short article on this in 2017, the best part of which is this graph:

They observe than in all four countries the gap (between the median population age and that of the leader) has been narrowing over time, but also

The average age at which a French president is elected is almost 60, the oldest of the four countries. Britain, where the average stands at 56, has not elected anyone over the age 60 since the 1970s.

As with so much else, Donald Trump is an outlier: at the age of 70 he is the oldest person to be elected president in American history.

So it matters a fair bit what the time frame is. Also, it's hard to draw conclusions from small samples, so the shorter the time frame...

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One interesting related observation is that in parliaments elected by proportional representation there are more younger deputies. This might explain why PMs are more likely to be younger than presidents, but I don't have hard data on the latter issue.

One theory is that PR systems encourage greater voter participation in general, so that could translate into more younger voters voting (the youth typically participate less than older voters) so that might translate in more votes for younger leaders, which the younger voters prefer at least in some contexts. But there are a lot of factors potentially damping this effect and I'm not aware of studies proving this kind of "transference" is happening for positions like presidency (when directly elected).

Answer 2

Part of the answer may be that the US constitution does not allow the president to be younger than 35 years old. And there are also minimum ages for congress.

Answer 3

The US political system at the federal level currently vastly favors individual office holders over political parties. The parties have very little power other than as "alliance arrangements" between office holders, despite their considerable organizational and fundraising abilities. And to the limited extent that parties are important in the US, only two parties are of any significance; the minor parties can play a spoiler role in some close elections but are generally otherwise not relevant.

This results in a situation where individual office holders in the US tend to keep their offices as long as they want them - which gives you older office holders. In many European systems, an office holder that runs afoul of their party leadership can be dumped; that is very rare in the US system. Since the parties have little ability to put their desired candidates into offices, US candidates who have acquired personal fame and name recognition also have an advantage; since building name recognition takes time, this also favors older candidates even when the candidate is not the incumbent. In addition, the European multiparty systems allow candidates who occupy significant positions in minor parties to gain office and even (as part of coalitions) national roles in Cabinets; it is easier for a younger person to maneuver themselves into a position of importance in a small minor party, particularly during time frames when that party is out of the ruling coalition.

Answer 4

Historically, Presidents typically tend to be in their mid 50s when they entered office. Kennedy remains the youngest President elected to office at 43 while Teddy Roosevelt is the youngest president at time of inauguration (Teddy was Vice President to McKinley, who was assassinated while in office, and Teddy ascended to the Presidency at the young age of 42.).

The reason for this is that Presidents are often the culmination of years of political experience, with service usually including either the Senate or Governor of a State prior to attempting candidacy. And typically, Leadership in either house in congress will be most senior and too stable to jump to the next level... additionally, some politicians are loved by the people who vote for them but are Nationally loathed. A recent poll found that the four members in congress known as "The Squad" who are all young progressive far-left democrats are supported enough in their distiricts that they could probably get re-elected, but nationally, their approval rating is as high as 25% and as low as 9%... they will not get Presidency with those numbers and would likely never try.

Additionally, there is a stigma against candidates who lost their last election from running for President, as they clearly do not have support, and many govenors will only run after their term limit is up.

Historically speaking, the 35 year old threshold mandated by the Constitution is the steepest, with the Representatives required to be 25 years old and Senators required to be 30 years old. Many of the founding fathers were in their late teens and early to mid 20s during the start of the Revolution, with Ben Franklin being the notable exception and being seen as the Cool (and Dirty) Old Man all the younger revolutionary thinkers hung out with as was George Washington (along with him being a Father to his Men as General of the Army). It's also important that the founders envisioned the Legislature to be the "first among equals" of the three branches with the Presidency being the guy seen by the world as representing America. Thus, the President needed to be a more revered figure and someone who's ideas could stand the test of time much more so than a young new shiny person entering as a baby faced Represetative. Sure, it's a popular idea now, but if it's popular in a decade, we'll talk about being the face of America to the world.

It should be pointed out that the 60+ candidates have only been a recent thing, as Trump is the oldest person to be elected President (70) in the history of the Union... and his 2016 opponent would have similarly set the record had she won. Going into 2020, most of the front runners of the nomination are also in their late 60s or early 70s and Bernie will be 79 two months shy of the election).

This may be due to Obama's extremely young age at election to office (46, not youngest but certainly in the top 10) and some of his detractors (and supporters if no one is around to hear them) point to his very short time in Washington as a factor that hurt many of his agenda goals' execution.

As a final say on the matter, while he is either a sainted hero or the devil's right hand man, most Americans love then ~72 years young Ronald Reagan's zinger when asked if age should be taken into account in the 1984 Presidential debate:

"I want you to know that also I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent's youth and inexperience."

If you find the clip, most won't shy away from a cut to his opponent, Walter Mondale, not even attempting to hide the fact he found the response funny and it sums up American's general attitude towards age: It's just a number and while it's discussed when out of the ordinary, it's ultimately no more likely to hurt as it is to help a President get elected.

Answer 5

Belgium is a constitutional monarchy.

Either way for me, this is an apples and oranges question.

The constitution in the different states differ widely with regard to the division of responsibility and power between the head of state or the head of government.

The Bundespräsident in Germany has basically only ceremonial duties while the power is in the hands of the chancellor, bundestag and the different states' own diet.

The French president has in the current fifth republic a lot of power (including a lot of emergency powers, in fact more than the American president, this in case of civil war or war.) This makes Macron an outlier, even if Sarkozy and Hollande also were comparatively young (compared with a de Gaulle who was 69 at the time when the fifth republic was instigated.)

Charles de Gaulle was himself also an outlier - it is unusual that someone has the influence to force a parliament to vote for a constitution like the current one in France. In the US case, it was I think basically only a Washington or a Lincoln which could have gathered the support to force such an constitution.

Gitanas Nausėda of Lithuania is 56 but Lithuania is an example of semi-presidentialism (ie the president has a fair bit more power compared to the German Bundespräsident).

Edit: The Bundespräsident of Germany has a large commitment to ceremonial duties, is elected by the Bundestag and the 16 Ländertag for a term of five years.

That position has a number of emergency powers and in some cases can veto legislation.

The Präsident has been veteran politicians but also like Joachim Gauck who was/is a evangelical pastor and activist. Basically well known persons which can be supported as a person who can be trusted to not be divisive.