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Philip Klinkner, the James S. Sherman Associate Professor of Government, is quoted in a Los Angeles Times article titled "The New Age of the Grown-Ups," in which he cautions against making too much of age as an asset.

 From the Los Angeles Times:

The white-haired set has been recruited to roam the corridors of power in politics and business. Some see it as a response to crisis and scandals....

The Former Vice President Walter F. Mondale, at 74, is being asked to pinch-hit for the late Democratic Sen. Paul Wellstone in Minnesota. ... the Securities and Exchange Commission has named 78-year-old William H. Webster ... to be its new accounting czar. ... Frank R. Lautenberg, former Democratic senator from New Jersey ... at 78, is stumping with vigor in a race that Sen. Robert Torricelli left ... the Bush administration has installed Donald H. Rumsfeld at the Pentagon, where his regular jousts with the media led the president to call his secretary of Defense, at 70, a matinee idol. Congress has always had a platoon of elderly -- Strom Thurmond, the South Carolina Republican who is already the oldest and the longest-serving senator in history, turns 100 in December.

... [Klinkner] cautions against making too much of age as an asset.

"It didn't help Bob Dole," he notes of the GOP presidential candidate who, at 73, was handily defeated by President Clinton in 1996.

Still, he says, his wife and mother-in-law "swoon over Donald Rumsfeld," and he himself wonders how long it will be before California Republicans, eager for victory, dump Bill Simon Jr. from Tuesday's gubernatorial ballot and put Ronald Reagan's name, with its enduring electoral magic, on the ballot.

The complete article is available on the Los Angeles Times Web site (registration is required):

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