[gpm]

A few thoughts

- President is unlike CEO/Senator/leading figure in that it has a fixed 4 year cycle (even Senator's can be democratically replaced in a few months with a by election).

- President is unlike the others in that it has a built in redundancy, the vice president. You should probably weight your opinion of the vice president candidate stronger when considering a president who is likely to become ill.

- Extremely old people seem to be as likely to be forward looking to me as middle aged people, perhaps more so. Many still care about their legacy, they probably have less concerns about personal wealth.

- Every presidential candidate is necessarily out of touch, you don't get to be in that position if you lead an even remotely normal life.

[dsfyu404ed]

>Every presidential candidate is necessarily out of touch, you don't get to be in that position if you lead an even remotely normal life.

Lincoln wasn't wealthy until he married into money. Carter and Truman were upper middle class. Eisenhower and Grant were on boring career paths that usually end with one retiring as a Lt. Colonel or thereabouts before history got in their way.

[gpm]

There are ways to have an abnormal life other than being born into money.

Let's look at Lincoln, by the time he was a presidential candidate:

- He had been married into that money for 19 years

- He had been a lawyer for 21 years - I presume this was a reasonably high paying profession like it is today (or more, the early case wikipedia mentions is 1840)

- He had served 4 terms in the Illinois House of Representatives.

- He had served a term in the US House of Representatives.