The Big Five-O

You are old, father William

the young man said

and your hair has grown very white

and yet you incessantly stand on your head--

Do you think, at your age, it is right?

--Lewis Carroll

*

Well, it’s all relative. Not so long ago--that is, not so long ago in comparison to the origins of the universe--you were probably among those railing against trusting anyone over 30.

But assuming your lungs are up to it, just think, Mr. President, on Monday, you can wake up and scream out this glorious new, five-letter word: “Fifty.”

The word may stick in your throat at first, kind of like an undercooked Egg McMuffin. That’s understandable. Turning 50 when you’re the leader of the Free World and the unanointed emperor of all of Baby Boomerdom is bad enough. Admitting it has got to be even worse.

But take heart: “We at the AARP do know that psychologically, we all tend to see ourselves as being considerably younger than our chronological age.” That’s the expert opinion of Melinda Halpert, director of membership development at the American Assn. of Retired Persons. Halpert would like to remind you that you are now officially eligible to join the AARP, no questions asked.

Speaking of Egg McMuffins--and of standing on your head--fitness goddess Kathy Smith thinks that now that you’re 50, you should take up yoga and lay off the Canadian bacon. About two years ago, Smith remembers shaking your hand at the White House and complimenting you on the fine example you set for the American people, exercising and jogging and all that. She also looked you straight in the eye and said: “You know what? You gotta stop making those stops at McDonald’s.” Did you listen?

Smith points out that being president is bound to be sort of stressful. As an antidote, “yoga would be brilliant,” Smith counsels. (Great, we can just imagine you bonding with Boris Yeltsin in the lotus position.) Another Smith recommendation: “A little strength training wouldn’t hurt.” This doesn’t have to be major stuff, no need to rush out and join Gold’s Gym. But after 50, those pecs, lats and shoulders do start to sag. Get yourself a set of 10-, 15- and 20-pound dumbbells and hoist them, say, 10 minutes a day, three times a week, in the Oval Office. The Council of Economic Advisors won’t mind a bit. They may even join in.

Running is also solitary even when you’re trailed by a pack of puffing press people, notes Smith, whose newest video, “Functional Fitness,” comes out in September. Fifty, she says, is a good time to think about exercise you could do with your family. Clog dancing! Consider the hit you and Hillary could make at White House dinner parties.

Lean, but never, never mean, you’ll look downright foxy in those dark, crepey, Donna Karan-ish suits you already favor. “For a big guy”--6 feet, 2 inches, 216 pounds, at last unofficial check--you wear your weight well, says Woody Hochswender, senior editor and menswear columnist at Esquire. Drop maybe 15 pounds, Hochswender suggests, and instead of looking rotund, you’ll look: very large. “Large is presidential,” he intones.

Fashion is an ameliorative device, in Hochswender’s view; “it lessens the pain and anguish of growing old.” It’s a good time to get sensible. Stop wearing such silly, fanciful ties, he suggests. No one is saying you should out-dull Dole, but more classical cravats might be in order. Also, lose those skimpy collars. Longer, more pointed shirt collars, Hochswender says, would elongate your face.

Oh, dear. We do seem to be dwelling on the slenderizing aspects of life at mid-century. A looser, less contrived, “more--how you say it?--airy” coiffeur would make your face look less square, submits Frederic Fekkai, hairstylist to such stars as Diane Sawyer and, on at least one occasion, your own wife. From his five-story auberge de beaute in New York, Fekkai confides, “You know what? President Clinton, he does his hair too neat. He needs to have less of the mark of the hairline. For instance, in the neck, it shouldn’t be straight forward. The hair should fall down naturally. This would make him look younger, more modern.”

Fortunately, Fekkai applauds the “very, very nice” way nature has shaded your 50-year-old hair. In Fort Worth, Texas, Linda Loredo, artistic director of Supercuts, thinks you’d be nuts to comb out your gray. “For some reason, gray makes me feel more comfortable,” Loredo confesses. “It’s like when you first hop on the plane and you see a little gray in the cockpit, you breathe easier. Gray makes men looks distinguished. I like to see that in leaders of the country, pilots, people like that who have your life in their hands.”

Blessedly, there are certain things at 50 you may want to fatten up. Your retirement portfolio, for instance. Baby boomers are notorious for regarding themselves as both invincible and immortal. But Los Angeles tax and estate attorney Don Silver, author of “Baby Boomer Retirement” (Adams-Hall Publishing, 1994), points out that 50 is when the more discerning figure out if they’re ever going to be able to retire.

Baby boomers are also a professionally restless lot, changing jobs and professions more often than their parents changed their tires. “That’s another tricky thing,” Silver admonishes, “particularly where there are company retirement plans and you switch to another job.”

You’ll probably do all right on the pension front; in 1995, former President Bush walked around with $148,400 of pension money in his pocket, and we can’t think of any reason why you should expect to do any worse. Still, Silver urges you to let your eyes travel around the homestead there at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. “Which benefits do you take with you?” Silver wonders. “Which do you leave behind? Are you vested?”

In your case, you’ve vested just about everything in politics, the only real job you’ve ever had outside a brief stint teaching law school. Under the best of your current career scenarios, you will be looking for a new job in four years. A less rosy professional trajectory may have you out on the streets in November. Just in case you were thinking of diving silver-head first into the private sector, career placement executive Patricia Morrow of Russell Reynolds Associates in Los Angeles advises you to spend some time with a speech doctor first.

“His Southern accent could be a liability,” Morrow says, adding, “Regionalism is OK in politics, but not in business.” Also, Morrow cautions: Stop smiling so much. You need a serious demeanor in the business world. Especially if you’re 50 years old and looking for your first real job.

In the same vein, Morrow says that if you expect to go anywhere in private industry, you’ve got to cut back on all those impassioned speeches where it appears that you care about the little guy--”i.e.,” Morrow says, “the employee.” Perhaps you should spend some time listening to Bob Dole’s speeches to learn how to become more dry and bottom-line oriented.

Of course, there are less earthly issues to think about. Having turned 63 earlier this month, the Rev. Jerry Falwell considers himself eminently qualified to talk to “those 50 boys” about the spiritual sphere. Fifty, notes the chancellor of Liberty University in Lynchburg, Va., and pastor for more than 40 years of Thomas Road Baptist Church, “is generally that milestone when we enter senior adulthood.”

Especially since the president “has had a shaky first half” of his life, Falwell champions this birthday as an opportunity to “recommit his life to role modeling, family, faith and values from the leading pulpit in the world.” In particular, Falwell says, “my advice would to be become all the more sensitive of young couples who are looking to see how your devotion to your spouse and to your child is deepening, not diminishing.”

Truthfully, Mr. President, sensitive is something you’ve always done well. Just ask Gail Sheehy, author of the definitive 1976 “Passages,” who believes you skirted the need for a crisis at 50 by precociously going through one a decade earlier. Think back: “Out of office, depressed, philandering, in a bad land deal, marriage falling apart. It was a classic midlife crisis,” Sheehy says, “and a rough one.”

Sheehy contends it took the Oklahoma bombing to vault you into what she terms second adulthood, something most of us can look forward to at about 50. “Up until that time he was at least perceived by the country as the younger brother: charming, irrepressible, undependable--all the things that younger brothers are,” Sheehy says.

Suddenly, with the destruction of the federal building in Oklahoma City, “he had the opportunity to do what he really does best, which is to empathize with people who are in pain. He was able to pull the country together at a moment of enormous anxiety and national shame. I think that began to give him a sense of new meaning to life, apart from the very cold, calculated political numbers he faced in light of the Democrats’ losing Congress.”

Fifty often occasions what Sheehy calls a “meaning crisis--a little death of the false sense of their early adulthood.” Her usual remedy is to tell people to “find your passion and pursue it.” Pause: “If we’re talking about Bill Clinton,” Sheehy deadpans, “this is a tricky thing to say.”

Luckily, Sheehy says, Clinton does have a clean passion: “It’s called golf.”

And yippee! At 50 there’s one nice consolation: You become eligible for the seniors professional golf tour. It’s slow and sociable--you could almost do it standing on your head.