Seniors weigh in on young McCain

Frankie La Rosa likes everything about John McCain’s politics. He likes his moderation. He likes his integrity. He even read one of his books. But when the primary rolls around here April 22, he plans to vote for Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Why? Because McCain, 71, would be the oldest president ever elected to a first term, and in La Rosa’s book, that’s just too old. La Rosa knows this because he’s old, too -- 78. And if he had any doubt in his mind, the pain he woke up with this morning in his bum ankle only served to underscore the point.

“I’ve got my brain, but physically, you’re kidding yourself,” La Rosa says.

He has just finished a carton of red Jell-O and a banana at the back table of the Bagel Barrel, where some locals have gathered to talk politics. La Rosa is a retired financial advisor from Merrill Lynch, and his mind is as sharp as a Dow Jones spike. But he discovered after his second bypass surgery three months ago that you cross 75 and -- wham! -- you never know what’s going to hit you.

“I had no symptoms. I was great. But I had a heart murmur nobody knew about and I had to have a new valve put in . . . ,” he says. “The body just can’t take it. I like McCain, I really do. But I am concerned about his age.”

McCain’s maturity hasn’t stopped his march toward the GOP nomination. And most voters didn’t have any pause electing Ronald Reagan at 69 and again at 73.

In this season of identity politics -- with women leaning toward Sen. Clinton (D-N.Y.) and African Americans toward Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) -- older voters do tilt toward McCain. He has held his own with the 60-plus set in most early primary states, though not by enormous margins. But many seniors seem drawn to the Arizona senator in spite of his age, not because of it.

So here in Pennsylvania -- where the retiree population is second only to Florida’s in size, pensions aren’t taxed and seniors zoom through the aisles of Acme supermarket on motorized carts -- we set out to ask older people, who are arguably best positioned to know: Is John McCain too old to be president?

“Hell no!” John Farrell, 83, said, on his way into Acme to buy food for his cat, Angel. He has just parked in a lot filled with Buicks and Chevrolets the size of battleships, this being the strip mall closest to two senior apartment complexes.

Farrell spent 21 years in the Navy. Military service, not age, is what he identifies with in McCain -- a former Navy fighter pilot who spent 5 1/2 years in a POW camp in Vietnam.

“Just because you’re a little older doesn’t mean you’re senile,” Farrell says, as a man on a little scooter with a big orange flag roars by.

At town hall meetings around the country, it’s typical for at least one voter to ask McCain about his age. “I’m older than dirt, have more scars than Frankenstein,” he likes to joke, but insists his memory is fine “except for hiding my own Easter eggs.”

Still, his campaign takes pains to stress his vigor, asserting that the Arizona senator’s breakneck schedule wears out his younger aides. McCain boasts that he can “outcampaign” candidates decades younger and that he hiked the Grand Canyon only two summers ago with his son Jack, “29 miles rim to rim in 130-degree heat.” Periodically, he sandwiches himself between his 53-year-old second wife, Cindy, and his sprightly 96-year-old mother, Roberta, who, we are reminded, was once refused a rental car in Paris so she went out and bought one.

George Fisk, 85, a retired business administration professor, takes in this information, unimpressed. At 71 he was “going gangbusters,” too. What puzzles him is not whether McCain can do the world’s hardest job but why he’d want to.

“He ought to have his head examined,” Fisk suggests.

Fisk lives at Pennswood Village in charming Bucks County, the Ivy League of retirement communities, filled with Princeton and Wellesley alums who glue themselves to C-SPAN. He and his friend Topper, aka Norman Cook, 84, a former television news director, have turned up this afternoon to discuss the age question.

“I could go out and work right now, if I could take a nap every afternoon,” Fisk announces.

So what that McCain’s face is lumpy from skin cancer surgery, or that bones broken during years of torture prevent him from raising his arms to comb his hair?

“I can’t comb my hair either, but for a different reason,” Fisk says, removing his black cap from his bald head for emphasis.

Being older than 70 doesn’t mean you’re washed up, these men agree, but the ominous weight of the presidency does give them pause, the more they think about it. What if he’s called to action at 3 in the morning?

“He wouldn’t have the acuity to handle it, that would be my fear,” Fisk decides. “I mean at 70 I was still driving, but I had already totaled a couple of cars.”

(Not all seniors agree, as we later learn from Joan Kooker, 82, sitting over by Acme with her dog, Herbie, a furry brown shoe box with ears. “I have to wake up every night and decide whether to let Herbie out,” she notes. When asked if McCain is too old, she responds: “Heck no.”)

Back at Pennswood, it’s clear that Fisk and Cook wouldn’t vote for McCain even if he were 50. They don’t like his stand on the war, among other things.

Fisk won’t say whom he supports, but Cook is an Obama man. “I don’t hold McCain’s age against him,” Cook says, “but I think there is a value in having a younger person. There is an idealism I think Obama possesses.”

Fisk yawns. It’s 2:30.

The average age for an American president is 54. If McCain were elected, he would be 72 on inauguration day and 80 should he finish a second term.

Peg Phillips, 81, also of Pennswood, finds merit in McCain’s life experience. She’s too tired to join the group at the community center, so we take the discussion to her apartment, which is filled with books and a big Mickey Mouse telephone.

“I realize he has a crooked face from being beaten up in the camps, but I don’t give a damn how he looks. He seems to be a very peppy person capable of taking care of things.”

She is a lifelong Republican who doesn’t like Bush anymore but also doesn’t care for the way he gets blamed for everything. “Ever since I moved here in twenty-oh-three it’s been ‘Bush does this horrible thing’ and ‘Bush does that horrible thing,’ and ‘I have a sore toe, and it’s Bush’s fault.’ ”

She graduated from Wellesley just like Clinton, but “wouldn’t vote for her for cricket stamper.”

If the fall matchup turns out to be McCain vs. Obama, who is 46, it will be the widest generational spread in electoral history.

But age doesn’t weigh heavily at Ann’s Choice, a retirement community outside of Philadelphia where residents have gathered for lunch in the Acorn Pub.

It isn’t that McCain is so old, it’s just that Obama is so refreshingly young. That’s how Carl Malissa, a 79-year-old retired general manager of an air-conditioning company, sees it. His wife, Fay, 74, loves Clinton, 60. This causes some tension in their apartment.

“You could throw up from all the corruption and scandal. Obama is too young to be deeply corrupted,” he says.

“I’m not living with you,” his wife of 55 years announces. “I’m moving out and taking my cat.” The cat, she notes, is 10.

“He’s not old,” she quickly adds.

Not that it matters.

faye.fiore@latimes.com

Times staff writer Maeve Reston contributed to this report.