Aging in America. Lawrence R. Samuel

innovation at the time and supposed evidence that the products had been scientifically formulated.¹

      Clinique’s new line of products focused on aging was very much in sync with the cultural zeitgeist in America. The largest and most influential segment of the population, baby boomers, were beginning to head into their forties in the 1980s, quite a shock for the generation said to be perpetually youthful. The nation as a whole was getting older as longevity increased, making aging a central issue, both personally and socially. Many Americans, however, were simply not ready to accept the fact that their youth was becoming or already was something of the past. The 1980s were the beginnings of what Prevention magazine called in 1984 “the de-aging of America,” as a good number of baby boomers as well as seniors actively sought ways to stall or reverse the physical process of getting older.

      Efforts to delay the natural aging of the human body were largely a reaction to the negative attitudes toward oldness that were still very much in play after the youth-oriented counterculture era. Although some progress was being made as American society generally became more tolerant, discrimination against older people remained pervasive, a means perhaps to publicly display the aversion and antipathy to aging that was a defining element of Western culture. The pure reality of getting older was, however, reason enough for individuals to arm themselves with whatever resources were available to manage the aging process as well as possible. Not surprisingly, gerontology flourished in this decade, as the field was perfectly aligned with the demographic surge that was taking place. “De-aging” was a nice idea, perhaps, but there was no getting around the fact that Americans and America would get older in the years ahead.

       A Phenomenon Peculiar to American Society

      No one was more aware of the realities of aging than senior citizens themselves. As their numbers grew, older people were becoming a more powerful political constituency, something the no. 1 senior citizen of the United States, President Ronald Reagan, well knew. Because of the landmark legislation that came out of the second and third White House conferences on aging, much anticipation surrounded the fourth as it approached. (Little had resulted from the first such conference held by President Truman—so little in fact that many people were not even aware that it had taken place. The White House had not officially sponsored that conference, another reason for its being largely forgotten.) “A phenomenon peculiar to American society which occurs every 10 years is now taking shape again,” announced Matthew Tayback, Maryland’s director on aging, a good year and a half before President Reagan’s 1981 conference would commence.²

      Despite (or, as it turned out, because of) all the planning that had begun during the Carter administration, this conference turned out to be a chaotic one, making it seem more like a particularly contentious political convention. Unlike the three previous White House conferences, which were largely free of politics, the fourth was clearly partisan in nature. Reagan fired those appointed by Carter, setting the tone for the 1981 conference. Social Security, health care, and other programs had become hot political issues since the third conference; these issues also made Reagan’s conference far more divisive than the one President Nixon had held a decade earlier.³ (Reagan had proposed in May 1981 to reduce Social Security deficits by cutting early retirement, disability, and other benefits for future retirees by almost 23 percent. He withdrew that plan in September but called for a bipartisan task force to study the issue, leaving things rather uncertain.)⁴ Also, a contributing factor to the antagonistic nature of the conference was the decline of trust in the government that had originated during the Nixon administration. “I fear that we are being and have been manipulated and are limited in what we can do,” said one conference delegate from California, not optimistic that any of the proposals that came out of the meeting would be taken seriously by the budget-conscious president.⁵

      Fearing that liberals would react strongly to the administration’s proposed cuts to Social Security benefits and cause some embarrassment to the president (most delegates did indeed lean left), Republican leaders went to extraordinary measures before and during the conference to try to prevent that from happening. “From all indications, the White House was in no mood to risk criticism of its policies,” the editor of Newsday later wrote as the dust settled.⁶ First, the Republican National Committee carefully screened potential members of the conference advisory board prior to the meeting, selecting only those people who were open to the idea of making cuts to Social Security benefits. Second, Richard S. Schweiker, the health and human services secretary whose department was responsible for the conference, oversaw the adding of hundreds of “mystery” delegates pooled from the president’s campaign donor lists in order to stack the deck of important committees.⁷ Third, key conference administrators were removed and proposals introduced to minimize debate and dissenting opinions, significant enough “irregularities” for the House Select Committee on Aging to launch an investigation even before the event began.⁸

      Even more draconian steps were taken at the conference itself either to sabotage potential divisiveness or to encourage a positive outcome for the president, a report by the General Accounting Office subsequently found. There was abundant evidence that Reagan’s people employed techniques evocative of old-school political machines or borrowed a page from Nixon’s manipulation of the press. Efforts were made to silence certain elected delegates and speakers, for example, notably eighty-one-year-old Representative Claude Pepper, the Democrat from Florida, who served as honorary cochairman of the conference. The administration also apparently made up fake credentials to crash committees and sessions, and it went so far as to raise the temperature in the auditorium in order to encourage people to leave the room.⁹ Rumors even circulated that meeting rooms were bugged, not that far-fetched an idea given a recent president’s habit of taping conversations for political purposes.

      Happily, the Republicans’ shameful ploys backfired; not one of them was in the least bit effective. The conference thus turned out to be an embarrassing episode for the president after all, reinforcing his image as not especially responsive to the interests of senior citizens despite being one himself. Some were even calling the administration’s failed attempts to get an unfair edge “a mini-Watergate” or “Graygate,” the last thing Reagan wanted to get out of his own conference. Despite the overt infusion of partisan politics, however, many agreed that the 1981 conference was for the most part a success given the consensus that was reached. Some six hundred resolutions were passed, including greater opportunities for older workers, more income support, improvements to Medicare and Medicaid, increased publicly financed housing for seniors, and, most important, the maintenance of Social Security benefits. “Social Security can and will be saved,” Reagan told the anxious delegates at the convention, although it was agreed that general tax revenue would not be used to pay for the benefits.¹⁰ While all of these resolutions were just goals at this point, most delegates were happy with what they saw as a solid blueprint for action through the 1980s.¹¹

       Maximum Life Span

      Some Americans were no doubt surprised that Reagan was not an avid supporter of seniors. The man was, after all, the oldest elected president in the nation’s history, although it was easy to forget that. During his first term, Reagan was a prime role model for “positive” or “productive” aging in both body and mind. Images of the seventy-year-old man riding horses or chopping wood only reinforced the idea that forced retirement at any age was a silly law. “The graceful aging of President Reagan’s body has become a matter of record,” wrote Sandy Rovner of the Los Angeles Times a few months after Reagan took office. The fact that the president had recovered quickly from his March 1981 shooting further proved wrong the many skeptics who had said that he was too old for the job. More than any other American, perhaps, Reagan defied stereotypes about aging, something gerontologists were quite pleased about. Having a septuagenarian in the White House was a powerful vote of confidence in and respect for older people—an all-too-rare commodity in our ageist society.¹²

      In addition to the public recognition of a senior citizen showing few if any signs of advanced age, there was good news on the scientific front of aging. Thankfully, many of the more specious attempts to slow or stop the aging process had by the early 1980s disappeared as it became increasingly clear that no fountain was youth was